By Rebecca Doherty & Alfonso Pulido
THE impact of “social entrepreneurs”—individuals who deploy innovation and market forces to address social needs—is growing. Bringing light to Africa, mobile banking to Bangladesh, low-cost health care to Nepal or better school lunches to the American cafeteria: In all these cases, the private sector is a big part of the action.
What do these enterprises need to scale up? And how can they do it?
RippleWorks, a private foundation, posed those questions in a recent survey of 628 social entrepreneurs from around the world. The entrepreneurs reported that the most important barrier to growth is—no surprise—money. The second most important problem is how to find and keep talented people. In that area, fortunately, entrepreneurs have more control. Here are three things they can do:
1Recruit to your strengths. Talent is scarce and, therefore, expensive. Moreover, the prestige, pay and job security of big companies are hard to resist for many perspective employees. Instead, social entrepreneurs have to sell candidates on the complete employee value proposition—especially the organization’s mission and vision.
2Make talent a top priority. Entrepreneurs of all kinds need to stay ahead of their hiring needs. Fred Swaniker of the African Leadership Group, who has founded four Africa-based organizations, spends about half his time on hiring. “It’s so important,” he says. “If you get that right, the rest of your life is easy. As the CEO, I don’t let that go.”
3Don’t just retain employees—grow leaders. Turning an enterprise into a talent development engine is critical to retaining talent and filling senior leadership roles. If an enterprise is good at growing leaders from within, talented people will want to stay. Training and skill development solves another problem too. Entry-level and midlevel positions are easier to fill, and grooming these people for senior positions can help avoid future hiring headaches.