#Purpose versus #Neoliberalism
The location is Davos, Switzerland and the event is a meeting of the Philanthropic Roundtable to discuss creating more effective social programs in Ukraine.
Those speaking include the leading lights of neoliberal ideology , Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, with billionaires Bill Gates and Richard Branson. There was also Muhammad Yunus and Matthew Bishop author of ‘Philanthrocapitalism: How The Rich Can Save the World’
The meeting was hosted by Viktor Pinchuk who is known to have funded Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation.
Richard Branson: “Business should focus more on solving social problems”
Were the Rich going to save Ukraine as a starting point? If so, it didn’t work as the world was to witness 5 years later.
Bill Clinton was the former US President to whom our late founder had delivered his 1996 paper, on business for social purpose.
Tony Blair was the British PM who made support of social enterprise government policy and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus is an advocate for social business. In 2007, Yunus published “Creating A World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism”
In 2007 as a practioner of social business, our founder published the work which would leave him hung out to dry and to die in poverty. In his strategy plan described as a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine, he argued:
“An inherent assumption about capitalism is that profit is defined only in terms of monetary gain. This assumption is virtually unquestioned in most of the world. However, it is not a valid assumption. Business enterprise, capitalism, must be measured in terms of monetary profit. That rule is not arguable. A business enterprise must make monetary profit, or it will merely cease to exist. That is an absolute requirement. But it does not follow that this must necessarily be the final bottom line and the sole aim of the enterprise. How this profit is used is another question. It is commonly assumed that profit will enrich enterprise owners and investors, which in turn gives them incentive to participate financially in the enterprise to start with.
“That, however, is not the only possible outcome for use of profits. Profits can be directly applied to help resolve a broad range of social problems: poverty relief, improving childcare, seeding scientific research for nationwide economic advancement, improving communications infrastructure and accessibility, for examples — the target objectives of this particular project plan. The same financial discipline required of any conventional for-profit business can be applied to projects with the primary aim of improving socioeconomic conditions. Profitability provides money needed to be self-sustaining for the purpose of achieving social and economic objectives such as benefit of a nation’s poorest, neediest people. In which case, the enterprise is a social enterprise.”
Following the Davos meeting I approached Virgin Unite, Grameen Creative Labs and Grameen Partner Erste Bank offering our help. Both Virgin Unite and Erste Bank had been soliciting project ideas. Neither were interested.
Two years later Erste Bank will be partners in a social enterprise development project in Ukraine. The project run by USAID and the British Council had been introduced to out proposal when they solicited partners in 2010. USAID had been called on for support in 2008.
Lesson learned: If someone tells you they want to save the world, don’t try to help them, it could kill you.
When founder Terry Hallman died in August 2011, his last visitor was a leader of Maiden activists, Natalya Zubar who wrote of his committment to Ukraine’s most vulnerable children.
“The author of breakthru report “Death camps for children” Terry Hallman suddenly died of grave disease on Aug 18 2011. On his death bed he was speaking only of his mission — rescuing of these unlucky kids. His dream was to get them new homes filled with care and love. His quest would be continued as he wished.”
