Memorial’s Centre for Social Enterprise positions Social Enterprise like this: Businesses with heart, social enterprises pursue social, cultural or environmental missions. While profit is not the main goal of the social entrepreneur, effective business-like practices are a critical support for their chosen cause. Social enterprises identify, evaluate and exploit opportunities to create social value through commercial, market-based activities. They create jobs and generate income like other businesses but they reinvest their profits, or surpluses, to support a social mission.
From that starting point, Business for Good set out to connect social enterprise theorists, students, practitioners and the community through a series of Business for Good engagements including one-on-one sessions, group meetings, a panel conversation, in-class presentations to graduate and undergraduate students, a public lecture and a social enterprise questionnaire. We made connections by posing two questions to a panel of academics and practitioners at the Business for Good Panel Conversation. The questions were: What do you see as the challenges and opportunities for social enterprise in Newfoundland and Labrador? and How does the idea behind social enterprise influence the opportunity and challenge?
The result is a compendium that highlights the exchange of ideas drawn from these questions at the Panel Conversation as well as through a Business for Good questionnaire.
The project was developed and a document compiled with financial support from Memorial University's Office of Public Engagement grant cycle August 2017. Limited copies were printed and will be distributed upon request as available. Electronic copies are available for print and download.
The Business for Good Panel Conversation was live-streamed and is viewable at https:/guidetothegood.ca/2018/03/28/business-for-good-facebook-live/
