What the heck is a social good business and why am I doing it?

When I tell people we are allocating a percentage of our profit to charity, either they are enthusiastic or they look like I’ve just told them that we are going to give away all our revenue because we’re crazy-arse hippies with absolutely no grasp on reality.

This article is not for the former, those who read Yanik Silver and his Evolved Enterprise, who perhaps recycle their cardboard, are in healing professions, or buy Fairtrade coffee.

This is for the latter, and I’m being a little tongue in cheek, yes, but here you go.

Kindred Global Mentorship is the business in question. It’s a marketplace for career mentorship. The name refers to this:

Kindred

[kin-drid]

noun: a group of persons related to another; family, tribe, or clan; natural relationship; affinity.

adjective: associated by origin, nature, qualities, etc.; having the same belief, attitude, or feeling; related by birth or descent; having kinship; belonging to kin or relatives.

In short, the name Kindred means “of the same family,” and refers to how our connection to one another as human beings transcends nationality, and implicates a certain responsibility for mutual support, in order to improve the human condition globally. Our vision for Kindred is that by connecting via the online matching platform, users are automatically contributing to solutions to global poverty. Kindred donates a percentage of its profit to charities funding independent business growth in developing countries. There are discretionary elements to this (for now, we need growth, we just launched), and it’s about culture and not just money. We like to shout out to likeminded charities, and support causes we believe in with time and effort (such as helping find career mentors for refugees via Ignite in Sydney).

Why is this so important? Silver’s book is definitely worth reading, but read below for a very brief explanation of the phenomenon of social enterprise.

Corporate Giving

Arguably, the most powerful entities in the world are corporations, not governments. In terms of complexity and wealth, of the world’s top 100 most powerful economies, 51% are companies and only 49% are countries.

Consumer demands for corporations to be ethically and environmentally responsible and to be more health conscious has grown exponentially even just in the past decade.

As much as consumers have influence by voting with their wallets so to speak, at the end of the day, the simplest, fastest and most direct route to influence is the decision of an organization with reach.

A company deciding to sell their products only with environmentally friendly packaging, or a popular brand deciding to ban all food products containing additives — such measures create change much faster than a consumer-driven push from the ground up. At the end of the day, so many people are trapped in economic circumstances which dictate a ‘price first’ response to buying, not to mention a time-poor attitude to decision-making!

Companies that behave ethically in addition to including charitable programs as part of their operations have a unique opportunity for influence.

Not only do they actively contribute to safety, environmental, and ethical standards through their business activities, but they make of us responsible and contributing consumers. More importantly, from our point of view at Kindred, they remove the onus of responsibility from the harried modern consumer, automating the process of giving so that consumers can just focus on what they are spending money on — in our case, quality mentorship.

A Culture of Giving

In short, in whatever way and to whatever extent we can, at Kindred we want to create a culture where contribution for the social good is part and parcel of doing business. Just by transacting on the platform, by paying for a mentorship session, someone in a developing country is being helped.

We think you’ll agree that it’s a goal worth striving for!