I agree that it would be a tragedy if we didn’t learn from our past or from the three different sectors, which is why I always try to argue that convergence, when it is taking the best of the three worlds, is a good thing. No one sector can solve all of our problems.

Before I chime in here, I should offer a disclaimer that I work closely, though not exclusively, with the social venture space.

Nell, the buzz about social enterprise that’s taken the sector by storm seems to imply that nonprofits/ngos, are broken, ineffective, and/or inherently not scalable. Markets, they seem to argue, are the best – if not the only – solution. (I wonder what has changed about markets since the advent of market failure. I also wonder why thousands of exceptionally bright development professionals over the years simply failed to miss the solution to development challenges across the globe. My sense is that the challenges we face cannot be solved simply by putting on our capitalist hats and getting to work.) Unfortunately, those who seem most enthusiastic about social enterprise appear to be uninformed about the history of ideas around civil society and the history of the nonprofit sector and/or international development. As any ‘student’ of this would know, the nonprofit sector, and nonprofits, perform many roles in society.

Perhaps most troubling, in not knowing the history of the nonprofit sector, or international, it seems social enterprise evangelists are destined to repeat the same mistakes the nonprofit sector, and development, have made over the past 4 plus decades. This would be a tragedy.

Our economic system is not a natural constant. It’s an invention. And it’s a very young one that already has accumulated an astonishing record of global destruction while bringing us stuff we know we mostly don’t even need. This system was designed by humans for humans and it can be changed by humans. Mankind has lived and prospered for thousands of years on different systems of wealth generation and will have to fundamentally rethink the current system if it wants to continue to prosper.

Convergence is an aspect of this system. And the fact that it also has positive effects does not change the basic insight of the analysis.

http://tinyurl.com/bmvocw

In the work on inclusive capitalism that began a decade ago, it had been argued as a means to strengthen civil society rather than replace it.

I guess that must be something that neither Michael Edwards nor Matthew Bishop would want to know.

Jeff Mowatt

And further, what I believe, and what I am asking you to consider, is that there are other aspects to convergence (beyond for-profit taking over the world of social good). For example, social good is becoming more of a consideration in regular for-profit business models–the burgeoning corporate social responsibility movement. Or nonprofit organizations are embracing some aspects of a for-profit business model in terms of scale, efficiency, clearer integration of the revenue model into their work, tracking results, creating strategy, goals, etc. Surely these aspects of convergence are a good thing?

I am not arguing, nor do I believe, that business is the answer to what ails us. However, I do think that there is tremendous benefit in a convergence of the three sectors when that means that the best of each of the three worlds is integrated toward a better, stronger social outcome in the end. Can’t we take the best of the three worlds and use that to create real social change?

Perhaps on this we can agree.

I’m not arguing inevitability. I am arguing that nonprofits have always been subject to market forces and that is increasingly the case, as is the case, in an increasing fashion, that the private sector is subject to social forces. This is what is called convergence. It is not inevitable, it is merely what is occurring. My argument is that to deny the fact of this convergence and to insist that the nonprofit and private sectors remain separate (as if they could) is not realistic. You must admit that the market is not merely “up to us” but rather is a very complicated system with so many variables that it is not able to be controlled by any one factor. Therefore the argument that you can somehow keep social change away from market forces is untenable.