A social venture is a business that seeks to solve a social problem and provide a social good. A social good is a product or service that benefits society. Clean air, clean water, literacy, and access to healthcare are examples of social goods. A social venture can be a for-profit or a not-for-profit organization. Social ventures are attractive for many young people because they have heart and have a commitment to engage in efforts oriented to improving others’ lives. The following are examples of three social ventures started by people under the age of 30. In each case, the venture’s primary motivation is to have a positive impact on a specific group of people or an entire society. In 2009, a few students at UCLA went into the dining hall, used their meal cards to buy sandwiches, and then delivered them to homeless people around town. In a single week, these students donated 300 meals. A few months later, the group partnered with UCLA’s Dining Service to allow students to donate unused meal funds to provide meals to community members. In 2010, Swipe Out Hunger, led by 25-year-old Rachel Sumekh, became a nonprofit social venture with expansion plans. Today, Swipe Out Hunger has chapters on 600 campuses and has delivered 4.8 million meals to people facing hunger. Each campus chapter has 8–25 students on its leadership team, which runs the Swipe Out Hunger program on its local campus. Swipe Out Hunger’s chapters vary in terms of how they operate, but they each share a common goal: to help eliminate hunger on campus and in the surrounding community.
In most cases, students donate swipes from their meal plans and their college or university converts the swipes to a dollar amount or pounds of food, which students or community members in need then receive as donations. Sadly, in 2020, 38 percent of students at two-year colleges and 29 percent of students at four-year colleges were food insecure, while thousands of meal swipes per year go unused. Swipe Out Hunger uses one problem to solve another one.....

Discussion Questions:

1. Are there differences between social ventures and for-profit organizations regarding the essential qualities of an opportunity? If so, what are the differences?
2. For the social ventures highlighted in the feature, what was the role of changing environmental trends in enabling the social venture to address the problem it is tackling?
3. How can social ventures attract talented employees, given that they typically do not pay as much as for profit organizations?
4. Would you enjoy working for a social venture? If so, why? Which of the social ventures highlighted in this feature interests you the most? Explain your answer.