Community Services
Coming in Late 2018
Phoenix Community Services is in the planning stages to start a “social enterprise”. We plan to be an organization that is directly involved in the sale of goods and services, but that also has specific social objectives that serve as its primary purpose. The profits will fund our social programs.
Our social enterprise shall exist to balance activities that provide financial benefit with social goals, such as providing financial education to low income families and job training. Project funding shall come primarily through selling goods and services, though we may also receive money from grants and donations.
Below is an article from www.community-wealth.org explaining what a social enterprise is, its history, and some of its goals.
Social enterprises are defined in many ways, but typically are nonprofit organizations that operate businesses in order to generate revenues and fulfill their missions. The concept has become increasingly common in the past three decades as a result of a combination of government funding cuts to social programs. Other factors promoting the growth of social enterprise include growing nonprofit recognition of the importance of earned income to enabling their organizations to use the independently generated revenue to support programs that make sense for their communities, build community wealth, and directly improve the job skills of people facing barriers to entry in the workplace.
Although social enterprise did not become a defined concept until the 1970s, nonprofits have been involved in such enterprises for over a century. For example, founded in 1902, Goodwill Industries began by employing poor, city residents to repair and sell donated goods, and then used the revenues generated to fund its community and job training programs. Other prominent nonprofits with long histories of social enterprise include the Girl Scouts and YMCA.
Social enterprises play a critical role in building community wealth for several key reasons:
These businesses build locally controlled wealth, which helps stabilize community economies.
Social enterprises can provide valuable training opportunities and support jobs for those who have been excluded from the traditional labor market.
The revenue organizations generate through such enterprises helps reduce their dependence on government and philanthropic funding, and thus, often encourages nonprofits to adopt more innovative community-driven approaches.
Through the development of such businesses, nonprofit organizations can strengthen their management and business capacities, which, in turn, can boost their overall program effectiveness.