Chapter 1: Social Venture Business Strategies for Reducing Poverty

Social ventures are innovative businesses that operate with social purposes to provide services to disadvantaged individuals or the community that the market does not. While typically established as not-for-profit organizations, they compete with for-profit businesses that produce similar goods or services. They have been used to reduce poverty through job creation for the chronically unemployed, help impoverished communities produce their own products rather than importing them, create markets for products produced by impoverished communities, and provide job training to help the chronically unemployed acquire employable skills. The operation of social ventures is fraught with challenges that constrain their viability. This chapter describes diverse types of social venture models that contribute to poverty reduction and explores various innovative business strategies used to improve their business performance.