Comments on: Sufferfest for Social Good

By: Sufferfest for Social Good | Steggy

Sufferfest for Social Good | Steggy — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:52:12 +0000

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By: Powered by Poverty | Steggy

[…] Last week and throughout my Thagomizer posts, I often give glowing reviews to social enterprises. However this week I’d like to look at the failures of many of the businesses I’ve praised. While social enterprise has provided a new way of funding social change, it has not been as effective at producing impact. Sure most social enterprises have positive outputs: shoes provided to the poor, increased availability of affordable health services, microloans for businesses. However while models like Toms Shoes provide a way forward for funding, it also represents a step back in the way we address poverty. […]

By: Dean Sies

Dean Sies — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 18:47:56 +0000

I feel their pain, but it’s a rite of passage if you’re taking the nonprofit/not-for-profit career path. A staggering amount of moons ago, I received a job offer from Children’s Hospital (now Children’s National Medical Center). I had already done some contract work there, so the shitty working conditions would have been no surprise. The only way the commute from Baltimore wouldn’t have been a hellish nightmare is if I had wheels (which I did) AND worked second or third shift or some sort of “offset” shift, which many employers in and around DC are doing now, but that didn’t exist back then. MARC to Union Station to Metro to a bus ride? Are you serious? But I still considered taking the job. Call it altruism, social conscience, whatever. But when the hiring manager slid that little piece of paper with my salary offer across the desk and I grabbed it up and did the math…ugh. I literally could not have afforded to work there. Is the reputation of the non-profit sinking? Maybe. But it’s been the shits for quite a while…

By: Hasdai Westbrook

Hasdai Westbrook — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 14:11:22 +0000

Great post, Robyn. The thing about something like TOMS shoes, though, is that as much as they dine out on it, social change is an extra, not integral to their mission. It’s a happy byproduct of their business strategy that they use for marketing purposes, which is totally legitimate. But it would be much the same if Nike hooked up with a traditional non-profit that provides shoes to those who can’t afford them (no doubt they already do this). Find me a social enterprise that can actually make a handsome profit off of providing shoes to those who can’t afford them, without exploiting them, and a shiny Nobel prize in both peace and economics is yours.