Accelerating Impact Through Social Entrepreneurship: Q&A with Pamela Roussos
One World is exploring the many facets of social impact as we get ready to host our 4th annual Innovations in Corporate Social Impact on 10/30 at GSVlabs in San Mateo. Pamela Roussos, the Chief Community Officer at the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, a Santa Clara University-based social enterprise accelerator, shares her thoughts on how to accelerate social impact.
WHY IS CORPORATE SOCIAL IMPACT AN IMPORTANT TOPIC?
Solving the huge problems of poverty and protecting the planet takes all of us, including corporations. And corporations can play a unique role, operating where governments, development and social enterprises can't, especially if they think beyond their "four walls" and consider their supply chains.
WHAT IS MILLER CENTER’S ROLE IN ACCELERATING CORPORATE SOCIAL IMPACT WITHIN COMPANIES?
Miller Center has had the opportunity to partner with a number of corporations, and it has happened when we have been able to demonstrate the value to them of partnering with social enterprises. Many companies don't even know about social entrepreneurship so there is an education process that needs to happen and then an exploration into challenges they are faced with and how social enterprises might be a part of the solution.
WHAT MIGHT BE 1 OR 2 EXAMPLES OF MILLER CENTERS’ WORK WITH CORPORATE SOCIAL IMPACT THAT YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE?
We partnered with GE Ventures and GE Africa. GE has a line of affordable maternal and child care medical devices. GE knows how to get meetings with Ministers of Health across the African continent, but it doesn't know how to get to rural health care clinics which is the target market for the affordable devices. We partnered together to work with two cohorts of social enterprises that were focused on maternal and child care outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Included in the cohorts were organizations running clinics for the poor, serving those clinics with things like solar energy and oxygen, and training community health care workers. There organizations could provide GE feedback directly on their products as well as help them understand the challenges they were faced with. For GE the interaction with the social enterprises were market sensing opportunities to help them grow their business. For the social enterprises it was an opportunity to interact with GE and give them feedback on products and services to help grow the social enterprise's business long-term.
WHAT WILL HELP COMPANIES DRIVE MORE SOCIAL IMPACT? (FOR EXAMPLE, ADDITIONAL SENIOR LEADERSHIP SUPPORT, OTHER?)
When companies can see, can measure, the direct benefit of social impact to their business many, many more will start investing. In my opinion social impact shouldn't just be bolted on the side of a corporation in the form of CSR, it needs to be embedded in the business, tying directly to business results. There are corporate leaders proving this out, we need more than the truly visionary.