Purpose and Profit The Essentials of Social Business Course

Introduction

 Social impact is fast becoming a defining issue for competitive advantage and long-term survival in today’s global business environment. With increasing focus from shareholders and customers on social return, the imperative to balance doing well with doing good has never been greater, whatever your organization or industry.  At the same time, social purpose organizations are increasingly looking to market and business mechanisms to resolve social problems.

Purpose and Profit: The Essentials of Social Business gives you the expert understanding, insights and practical toolkit to steer your company towards a more pro-social orientation, to launch your own socially focused entrepreneurial venture, or to invest for impact and social change. Intensely practical yet simultaneously enriched by the very latest theory on management and social purpose, this course is led by some of the world’s foremost authorities in economics, finance and impact investing, social entrepreneurship and public policy.

Duration

5 Days

Who should attend?

This course is designed for:

• C-Suite
• Senior leaders and managers in financial and commercial corporations with responsibility for corporate social responsibility activities.
• Senior executives in the second or third echelon of large organizations
• Managing directors or Management team members of medium-sized organizations
• Regional directors and country managers
• Senior project managers
• Business Unit directors

Course objectives

What will participants gain from the course?

• Identify new and emerging forms of social business and their social and political drivers, while distinguishing similarities and differences between the typical Commercial Corporation and social business.
• Evaluate complementarities and tensions between different conceptions of “the public good.”
• Grasp the importance of evidence and accurate measurement of social impact.
• Understand the institutional environment in which social businesses operate and apply the impact continuum.
• Analyze the roles of different organizations and mechanism in achieving both profit and purpose.

Module 1: An Introduction to Purpose & Profit

• Exploring the drivers of change: different types of social business; corporations and the market; social entrepreneurship; government; charities and society.
• Understanding motivations and incentives, and organizational design.

Module 2: Using the market for good

• Analyzing how market start-ups address and resolve chronic social problems.
• Examining how emerging social businesses leverage market mechanisms to deliver social impact.

Module 3: The conscious corporation

• Investigating how to reform mainstream corporations for the public good while preserving profitability.
• Practitioner session

Module 4: Financing for impact

• Evaluating diverse sources and combinations of funding for the social business, including impact investing.
• Practitioner session.

Module 5:  Understanding impact

• Exploring value: what is public benefit and what does a “good” society look like?
• Reviewing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the impact continuum: ethics, Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) criteria and intentional impact.
• Understanding impact measurement and why it matters.
• Re-defining climate change as the paradigmatic social business challenge.
• Practitioner session.