Why Social Business?
As a social business, creating an impact is at the heart of what we do.
It is not simply about helping. When we talk about impact, we think about effectiveness, measurability and questioning whether our work achieves the outputs with the greatest positive effects.
This sounds simple, but it determines and influences many discussions in our daily work. Moreover, impact is not as easily quantifiable as profits. That makes it more complicated. Some of the tools we are using in our work are for example the Impact Staircase, the Theory of Change or the Social Business Model Canvas.
It is important for us to think about impact on different levels. What do we mean by this? An example from our Impact Venture, the Learning Circle.
In the Learning Circle, Learning-Coaches work online, digitally, long-term and on a regular basis with school pupils. The focus is on personal growth and professional learning.
The profound impact we have is the development of each pupil. These young people increase their self-confidence, learn more independently, get better grades, can define goals and much more.
The broad impact in the Learning Circle is to redefine “self-effective learning” in the long run. Learning does not mean learning by heart, but learning means growing personally. How it works and what it takes to do that is what we are exploring. In the broader impact we pass on this knowledge – to teachers, parents and educational institutions and thus initiate a rethinking in the whole “system of education”.
You can see how complex and big the issues are becoming. For us, it is important to think through these different levels of impact and to incorporate the lessons learned into our annual goals, quality assurance and impact measurement, etc.
In addition to the focus on impact, social business also means finding a sustainable business model. This sounds simple, but it is one of the biggest challenges in our work. Often our direct clients cannot pay for the services we offer. Then the question is: who pays for this service? We have found different solutions for this in our wirkt. Ventures. We will describe exactly how this works in individual blog posts.
What drives us to be a social business?
Working in a meaningful way with colleagues who all believe in the same vision is the most fulfilling thing I have done in my career so far. Coming from the private sector, I have a direct comparison and often cannot believe that we at wirkt. choose our KPIs mainly for their social impact. As a social business, we are still part of the economic system and generate market income - and at the same time I see that we have a leverage to change something that social organisations or charities might not have. That's what motivates me to work in a social business and to learn a lot more about it!
Solving social problems requires sustainable solutions. Business and impact should not be contradictory, but complementary. Creating real, tangible added value and at the same time helping to build something new is for me the most rewarding thing you can do professionally.
For me, equal opportunities are the highest values that form a peaceful and liveable society. And there is so much to do here - whether in education, career, gender or resource distribution. Through my work in a social business, I can start exactly where ideas for the society of tomorrow are born and lived. For this generation and the next - for my children's generation.
For me, social business means stop talking yourself out of your responsibility and embrace your own explosive power.
Working in a social business means that I don't ask myself the question "why?". I know what I am using my resources for and that is why I love doing it. The work is challenging at times, but it really comes from the heart. You can feel that energy and appreciation both within the team and with our target groups, which makes it very valuable to me.