Tara Anderson has written series of three articles for Pioneers Post on social enterprise business models in a time with Corona. The articles works as a guide for social entrepreneurs to help them develop the best possible and most resilient businessmodel for social enterprises to be able to survive through times of crises.

In the first article Tara Anderson gives a thorough beginners guide to what a social enterprise is. This gives social entrepreneurs a chance to see if they got the basics right. She focuses on the different elements that needs to be in the social enterprise business to be successful. In a time with Corona it has become even more important for social entrepreneurs to make sure they have the right business model.
Tara Anderson also explains why it is more complicated to run a social enterprise with two goals both to earn a profit and to have a social purpose and create impact. This means that social entrepreneurs constantly have to balance decisions between mission versus money, customers versus beneficiaries stakeholders with social priorities versus stakeholders with commercial priorities and so forth.

In part Part 2 Tara shares shares 17 social enterprise business model types in order to inspire and help social entrepreneurs to  shift their business model to more adopt to the Corona situation.
The 17 different businessmodels are also described in Business Model Zoo a material developed by Cass Business School
for each businessmodel type Tara Anderson gives examples of existing social enterprises.

In the final part of the series Tara Anderson suggests seven questions that every social entrepreneur needs to answer when they set out to build a social enterprise business model.
The questions are:

1. What social impact do you create for which beneficiaries?
2. Who are your customers, what do they want, and how do you structure the value proposition?
3. What products and services can you offer that achieve the best balance of profit and social impact?
4. What are your business model options, and how many should you run?
5. How do you finance the model?
6. How do you organize your resources to deliver profit and social impact?
7. Is your product and services portfolio balanced?

 

You can read Tara Andersons articles on Pioneers Post:

Part 1 Covid-proof your business model: a guide for social entrepreneurs

Part 2 Reimagining your business model: 17 social enterprise types to guide you

Part 3 Seven steps to consider when pivoting (or building) a social enterprise business model

Tara Anderson is director and co-founder at The Dragonfly Collective and a strategic marketing advisor for On Purpose both organisations that are working with helping social enterprises.