CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A competition being held this week by North Carolina’s public university system pits 31 student-led teams that are presenting business plans for enterprises that would both generate profits and help the needy.
The first North Carolina Social Business Conference on Thursday promises to boost, if only a little, a hybrid of business and charity getting more attention since the Great Recession highlighted that free markets can’t provide all society needs. The competition at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro is also a platform for the university system to show off its 17-campus emphasis on pulling concepts out of classrooms and into commerce.
The teams will be asked to explain how they would build a profit-making enterprise generating cash for purposes such as helping retrain the unemployed or feeding the hungry.
“We know that students get excited about solving big problems, dreaming big dreams, imagining a world that’s different from the one they grew up in. This is blended in this competition with a reality check how are you going to pay for it?” said Leslie Boney, a University of North Carolina system vice president whose job involves finding ways to employ college brainpower outside of campus boundaries. “It’s chocolate and peanut butter.”
Social businesses already operate worldwide, from chocolate production in Africa that funds pediatric medicine to California-based Tom’s Shoes, a company that donates a pair of shoes to children for every pair sold. They’re part of the spread of the business values of innovation and financial discipline into government and charities.
Venture philanthropists emphasize getting measurable results for their investment. In Great Britain, the conservative government this spring launched the Big Society Bank to invest in charities and social enterprises as spending on social issues is slashed.
Universities from Kyushu in Japan to Columbia in New York are increasingly spreading the idea of the socially conscious enterprise.
