SBS Featured in Blue Avocado
January 14, 2020
Street Business School was honored to be featured in the Blue Avocado story, “#RiskyBusiness: Why Earned Income Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be“.
“Is earned income really a silver bullet or is philanthropic income just as powerful? This drift towards 100 percent earned income has contributed to the misguided impression that socially conscious businesses can fill social need better than philanthropic institutions.
The issue isn’t that earned income is bad, but that focusing on it as a sole source of income, or preferred source of income, isn’t right for a lot of organizations. BeadforLife’s sister organization, SBS, learned from this experience and chose to diversify and combine philanthropic and earned income in the form of franchise training fees, philanthropic giving, healthy savings, and multi-year commitments to create a long-term vision for “sustainability.” While a program of BeadforLife, it had 1,900 entrepreneurs trained over 11 years. Since this hybrid model of social franchising and blended capital within the last three years, SBS has graduated an additional 15,000 women and another 25,000 in the queue.
Ultimately, when the purpose of money is to create positive social impact, donors should consider giving to an organization that knows what it’s good at, focuses on that goal, and unwaveringly focuses on social returns. And nonprofits need to stay true to their missions and commitment to impact, versus chasing this new shiny object.”
Read the full story on Blue Avocado today!