Introduction
The past few years have seen a constantly growing interest of the people in social entrepreneurship. With the help of this, a lot of people look forward to creating social impact but also maintaining a viable business model. Most social entrepreneurs leverage innovative and sustainable practices to solve some of the challenges faced socially and environmentally specifically by the backward communities.
Meanwhile, social entrepreneurship is always quite rewarding, however, at the same time some challenges will be discussed at a later point in this article. If you are someone who wants to be a social entrepreneur, then this article is for you, here we will discuss some of the benefits and challenges you can face while being a social entrepreneur and why it is one of the prominent fields for society as well as the industry.
What is social entrepreneurship?
Social entrepreneurship is an approach where people not only create a profitable business but also aims to solve the problem that less privileged people face in any of the industry like education, healthcare finances and etc. one of the key objective of being a social entrepreneur is to utilize the principle of business management and create a positive impact on the society. A few of the skills that one can leverage to start their social entrepreneurial journey are creativity to develop solutions, the ability to find solutions to social challenges, and a lot more.
Top benefits of being a Social Entrepreneur
Create a positive impact on society.
Social entrepreneurship is all about addressing the problems of society by utilizing innovative and sustainable approaches. This gives you the great opportunity to help people who still live in the backward community.
Support from the local
Another advantage of being a social entrepreneur is that you can get a lot of support from the locals in terms of human resources, finances, and material. By utilizing this advantage you can create a business with low investment and high returns. A lot of social entrepreneurs take help from government agencies and NGOs to start their businesses. These organizations help to secure funding and market their product or services.
Common interest.
Social entrepreneurship addresses the common interest of society by allowing them to identify the problems and develop solutions that can be used by people who are directly or indirectly affected by the problem. The problem can be anything related to lack of education, illiteracy, or any other issues. Social entrepreneurs work to find solutions for such problems and deliver them.
A large Number of Opportunities
A social entrepreneur always ensures that the less privileged section of society gets more opportunities. They help people by providing dem with education, and employment and spreading awareness among them. Social entrepreneurs are usually motivated by their goal of providing a quality life to less privileged ones.
Promotes innovation
Social entrepreneurship is all about solving a problem by developing innovative solutions. It is a kind of philanthropy that generates more jobs and enhances economic growth with the help of profitable businesses. Social entrepreneurship is an approach to bringing social change in society with the help of innovations and market forces.
Large employment
As we discussed earlier, Social entrepreneurship solves economic, environmental, and social issues. Being a social entrepreneur, one creates a business for the society that opens up a lot of employment opportunities in various developing countries. Some of the communities for which jobs are created are marginalized youth and women from vulnerable communities.t this helps them to come out of self-imposed isolation and gain access to skills, livelihood, and education.
Challenges of being a social Entrepreneur.
Here are some of the key challenges that most social entrepreneurs face these days.
Difficult to find collaborations
In the recent few years, various changes have taken place in the business world. A lot of businesses find it difficult to keep their goals separate from social responsibilities due to which a lot of businesses are not able to find collaborations. A lot of social entrepreneurs still feel quite uneasy as they believe that large enterprises can take up their operations.
No constant source of income
Being a social entrepreneur it is quite essential to have finances sorted for your enterprises without affecting social work. Setting up a social business requires a lot of resources. This could be the learning material for the people whom you want to provide healthcare services. If an enterprise does not have a profit margin that it becomes quite difficult to cater to the expenses.
Lack of Market discipline
For social entrepreneurs, market discipline is not applicable. A lot of unsuccessful and incompetent social entrepreneurs can continue to work longer than their commercial competitors. Focusing more on social mission sometimes can divert social entrepreneurs from working on success-generating pillars like discipline, high performance, and accountability.
Implementation Hurdles
A lot of social goods and services sound quite promising in the beginning but when it comes to implementation, they might fail. There can be different reasons that can cause failures like no funds to get resources, external hurdles, no motivation, and unstable growth.
Miss alignment with the goals.
Various social entrepreneurs face misalignment with their goals. In most instances, there is a lot of pressure on the stakeholders and investors to focus more on the financial returns instead of the social impact. This might cause some difficulty for them to balance their financial and social goals or maybe some conflict.
Resistance to change
Several social entrepreneurs face resistance to changing their stakeholders and established systems. Quite a few traditional institutions are always resistant to applying innovative business models and consider social entrepreneurship to be a threat to their interests. In a few cases, social entrepreneurs might also face social and cultural barriers that make it quite difficult for them to make a meaningful change.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a social entrepreneur always focuses on working for society by creating innovative solutions that can create more job opportunities and impact society. Mostly this is quite beneficial for the less privileged communities. Although social businesses do offer a lot of benefits, one also needs to ensure that they are profitable while creating an equitable and sustainable society. Being a social entrepreneur you might face some challenges like no proper income, market discipline, and misalignment from the goals.
You need to be aware of such challenges and work towards them to overcome them. By proper determination, creativity, and hard work, as a social entrepreneur, you can create a meaningful change in society and also achieve the goal of creating a better and equitable world.
