| An open letter to the Baby Boomer generation. From: Generation Y
To: Baby-boomers
Subject: What is your legacy?
What is your legacy, baby-boomer? If you are reading this email, you are one of the most privileged human beings on the planet – you are endowed with great talent, opportunity and power. It is said that with great privilege comes great responsibility. Are you leaving the world in a better state than you found it?
In Generation Y, an increasing number of talented young graduates are engaging with this question at the outset of their careers. Is this youthful idealism or is something more substantial afoot? The fundamental change is that, graduating even twenty years ago, the options were starker: Charity or business. You choose – the two do not mix. In the past the model was one epitomised by Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller and now Gates and Buffett: Get rich first and give it away later. This of course means perpetuating a model you may not be totally happy with only to spend all your earned resources at the end of your life trying to fix the problems caused by the system in which you became rich. Is there another way?
The Social Enterprise community is expanding rapidly, resembling open-source software in its collaborative nature. In the UK alone, where there is a Cabinet position ‘Minister for the Third Sector,’ it is estimated that there are 55,000 social enterprises. There are conferences on Social Enterprise all over the world from Boston to Beijing and Business Schools and Universities are engaging with the social context of business. Personalities such as Muhammad Yunus and Al Gore demonstrate the power of the individual to create social change. Three major foundations, Ashoka, Schwab and Skoll now give considerable support to social entrepreneurs worldwide. The internet has been a catalyst, with success stories such as www.kiva.org, a microfinance website that anticipates lending over $1billion over the next seven years to entrepreneurs in the developing world.
A new breed of ‘philanthropreneurs’ such as Jeff Skoll and Pierre Omidyar from Ebay demonstrate that the ‘success’ of an investment depends greatly upon what type of return you are expecting. To take an example, if you had invested $1,000 in Microsoft 30 years ago (its IPO was in March 1986) your shares would now be worth around $400,000. But – what if thirty years ago you had put $1,000 into a small economics project conducted by Muhammed Yunus in Bangladesh (who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his success in microfinance with The Grameen Bank)? The value of this investment is simply measureless now: In Bangladesh alone, 80% of poor people have been reached with microcredit, poverty has been reduced from 73% in 1974 to 40% in 2005. Worldwide, microcredit has been replicated on a massive scale, with varied success and with its critics it must be said, but there are certainly thousands of success stories. Which was the more ‘profitable’ investment?
The legal framework in which we work, is changing too. In the UK, the ‘Community Interest Company’ (CIC) was realised in 2004 and there are now over a thousand CICs. Meanwhile in the U.S., a similar legal structure, known as the ‘L3C,’ an amendment to the ‘Limited Liability Company’ is presently going through the legislature in Vermont and North Carolina. These new structures allow social enterprises to identify themselves as having a social goal as their primary objective, whilst not forgetting the need for profit. A moniker such as ‘CIC’ or ‘L3C’ identifies socially forward-thinking organisations for Foundations and eventually venture capitalists to invest in. It is hoped that this will release significant capital presently ‘tied-up’ in Foundations on the understanding that there would be a return on their investment both in dollar and social terms. In the U.S. alone it is estimated that Foundations hold over $550 billion in assets.
Social enterprise is not a solution. It is an identifier. It enables people to define themselves as having priorities around ‘we’ the society as well as ‘me’ the individual. Any organisation that wants to attract the best and brightest from Generation Y needs to engage seriously in this balancing act. The great challenges of our times; climate change, peak oil, extreme poverty…, WILL NOT be solved with the capitalist model functioning as it is. New, Generation Y, additions to the workforce understand this fact. Legislation is of course imperative – history tells us that public awareness and willingness are not enough on their own. But the marriage of business and social objectives in the social enterprise movement gives politicians a new constituency to draw upon when they come to build laws. It also gives the public – you and I, who might feel disillusioned with the system – an opportunity to take control ourselves.
The success and expansion of social enterprise tells the corporate world that there is another way. A third way. ‘CSR’ was the first step on this road.
The world is in our hands. Let us create a legacy to be proud of.
Jon McIntosh, an entrepreneur from the UK and graduate of Cambridge University, is presently studying social enterprise as a Sauvé Scholar at McGill University in Montreal. He recently formed ‘The Reach Foundation,’ an education non-profit to work alongside his business, Reach Cambridge Ltd, which runs summer schools in Cambridge. |
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