Social Venture - Examples

Examples

• ACTWIT, proposed and launched by a group of active AIESEC Alumni in 2012, provides an international web-site that allows members of the network to collaborate and realize socially-oriented activities positively changing the world. ACTWIT's proposed mission is "to give active people (@-users) the power to act together with their friends and trusted associates using knowledge, resources and ideas for positive social and business impact". As it's proposed by the idea of ACTWIT, it is "is even more socially-oriented when many other "social ventures" as one of additional ideas of ACTWIT is distributed (public) governance where access to governance power is granted to all social group's members, i.e. all @-users who want to take commitments and to participate in governance, contributing to ACTWIT development and bearing the burden of additional obligations: voting, active participation in discussion governance principles, strategy and high-level decisions, etc."
• Kiva (organization), founded by Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley in 2005, provides a web-based platform that allows individuals to loan money to developing world entrepreneurs. Kiva operates as a non-profit with its web-based platform provided as a public good. Yet Kiva partners with microfinance institutions (MFIs) to identify and establish loans with the developing world entrepreneurs. These MFIs can charge interest and make a profit.
• Victoria Hale founded The Institute for OneWorld Health (iOWH) in July 2000 to find cures for infectious diseases prevalent in the developing world. iOWH is a non-profit pharmaceutical company that performs research and development on drugs abandoned by other pharmaceutical companies due to their lack of profitability. iOWH also partners with the for-profit drug manufacturers to produce and distribute their medicines. These medicines are then sold at low cost to those that need them the most. The revenues, in turn, are used to further the mission of making effective, low-cost medications accessible.
• Beginning in 1977, Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish started a journey to establish SEKEM, a "garden in the desert." The strategy that SEKEM employed was to develop a community based on holistic and organic agricultural methods. The result was a group of commercial ventures to produce and market agricultural products. Yet these commercial ventures were a secondary motive used to foster human development—providing education, jobs, and social services for a thriving community.