Is Scope the first convert to Purpose?

In Pioneer’s Post this week we learn of this disability charity’s plans to convert to a mission led social purpose business.

Chief Executive Mark Atkinson says they aim to become a social change organisation which puts disabled people and their needs front and centre.

In the 1996 position paper which questioned the purpose of business, founder Terry Hallman argued the case for a new business model, saying:

“The P-CED concept is to create new businesses that do things differently from their inception, and perhaps modify existing businesses that want to do it. This business model entails doing exactly the same things by which any business is set up and conducted in the free-market system of economics. The only difference is this: that at least fifty percent of profits go to stimulate a given local economy, instead of going to private hands. In effect, the business would operate in much the same manner as a charitable, non-profit organization whose proceeds go to local, national, and international charities.”

From 2006, disabled children and their needs had become the central focus of our work, when Hallman spoke out about ‘Death Camps, For Children’ in Ukraine.

Soon after, the ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine set out a strategy for systemic reform. Not simply to fund the transition from abuse in state care to loving family homes, but to stimulate local economic conditions The greater majority of these children were economic orphans, abandoned by parents who had been unable to support them.

“This is a long-term permanently sustainable program, the basis for “people-centered” economic development. Core focus is always on people and their needs, with neediest people having first priority — as contrasted with the eternal chase for financial profit and numbers where people, social benefit, and human well-being are often and routinely overlooked or ignored altogether. This is in keeping with the fundamental objectives of Marshall Plan: policy aimed at hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. This is a bottom-up approach, starting with Ukraine’s poorest and most desperate citizens, rather than a “top-down” approach that might not ever benefit them. They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first — not secondarily, along the way or by the way.

“From there, broad economic and social development can develop “upwards” concurrently with more conventional top-down approaches to economic development. Moreover, this program will not only meet initial, most critical and urgent objectives of childcare reform and poverty relief in Ukraine, it will also provide training for ever-growing numbers of specialists educated in social enterprise economic thinking with sufficient funding to put ever more well-designed projects into action as Ukrainian citizens invent them. “

First impact in 2007 was observed in government pledges for 400+ rehab centres for disabled children. It was soon followed by the doubling of adoption allowances and a pilot for the suggested ‘Homes for all Children’ strategy, based in Kharkiv.

By the end of 2010, childcare policy changes were reported to have resulted in a 40% increase in domestic adoption. This was reported in the Kyiv Post as Ukraine’s ‘Overlooked Success Story’

The Purpose of Business is a Linkedin group focussed on social purpose business and its practitioners.