Several years ago, Laura, along with other partners, noticed a fundamental problem in the social sector in Ecuador: foundations and NGOs that felt isolated and lacked adequate resources to face financial challenges that put them on the brink of bankruptcy.
Venzal points out, in fact, that in Ecuador, there are almost 5,000 NGOs registered with the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES), of which only a third are operational.
What is the fundamental mission of Boom?
-We want to help these organizations overcome the obstacles they face and guide them toward a path of greater impact and sustainability. There are three of us on the board, and one of the directors is a priest who ensures that our proposal has clear Christian roots.
What kind of projects have passed through it?
-In these two years, 12 social organizations have been involved, most of them foundations, but also some social enterprises. All of them are non-profit organizations. They are organizations created to solve a social problem and most of them operate thanks to donations from private and public entities.
The traditional dependence on external donors leads to great vulnerability: financial instability - difficulty in planning and retaining talent; donor focus - regardless of whether the solution responds to the real needs of the grantee; competition for limited resources - conceiving other foundations as competitors rather than nodes in the same network of support and momentum; and lack of long-term sustainability.
What do they look for when they come to Boom?
-Organizations are looking for a way to be sustainable in the long term. That is, a viable business model that allows them to focus on the problem to be solved and not on the funds to be raised. In this sense, the forms of social and solidarity economy are presented as a solution for some of them. A social enterprise is an organization that seeks to solve a social problem through a market model.
Solving a need in the market is profitable. It also has many other advantages in terms of real social impact. In the Acceleration Program, we offer foundations the opportunity to build a model of sustainability for their organizations, so that neither their users are structurally dependent on their support nor they are structurally dependent on donors.
This means that organizations will rethink their services with a focus on delivering real value to their users and communities, and then look at who and to what extent they are willing to pay for it.
For example, if the beneficiary population of a product or service is also a customer, even at a discounted price. The thermometer of the goodness of the solution is the user, not the donor. On the other hand, if the beneficiary is also a worker, it achieves the greatest solution to poverty: a source of income.
In any case, what is most relevant is the change in the perception of both donor and beneficiary of their relationship. The donor becomes a supplier and the beneficiary becomes a client or worker, which places him, de facto and in everyone's mind, in a situation of equality. The provider, the client and the worker all contribute to the exchange. All parties affirm their own capacity.
Therefore, the social enterprise model, explored by the foundations participating in our Acceleration Program, can solve not only the financial problems of NGOs, but also their veiled problems of impact, as revealed in the documentary film Poverty Cureof the Acton Institute.
Breaking out of our cycle of donor dependency may be linked to breaking the mentality of dependence on aid from the communities we work with.
The other day I was listening to this reflection: "It all started to work when we stopped asking 'how can I help you' and asked 'how can I do business with you'".
How is this mentoring done?
We implemented a 10-week Acceleration Program that combines training, workshops, mentoring and personalized accompaniment. We selected 8 social organizations with high impact and scalability potential and helped them transform their value propositions, financial sustainability models and impact measurement systems.
During the program, a space for pause and reflection is created for the management teams of the foundations, something unusual in the day-to-day life of anyone, especially in a sector where the need is endless.
In addition, they enrich their brainstorming with ideas from mentors with innovative backgrounds in very diverse fields and expand their horizons with constant exposure to new trends, testimonies and tools. We make sure that mentors cover many areas, and one area is the Social Doctrine of the Church.
For our students, it is a new opportunity to see the Church from a different perspective, moving away from a paternalistic role and seeking solutions that, based on a solid foundation, promote social justice, solidarity and the well-being of the people and communities they serve.
Finally, these teams, highly committed to solving social problems and belonging to different organizations, live, share and create together. Spaces are designed so that they can discover the potential to collaborate and complement their services for the benefit of their users.
Don't you think that social organizations are often "unprofessional" and this means that they do not come to fruition over time?
-The professional world is conceived in the popular imagination as the world of wealth generation for individual and corporate profit. This is changing, in part, thanks to the widespread pursuit of purpose through work. The gap between earning money and contributing to society is being challenged. From the other side, that of contributing altruistically to society, the same question is emerging.
Generating wealth, and doing it well, seems the best way to contribute to social development. This implies meeting a need with a real solution, having income to attract and retain talent, having benefits to serve the poor, and being able to take the solution to other cities, countries and regions.
However, informality in the social sector remains a reality. People endowed with the madness to undertake social work - at the expense of their family finances - are often overwhelmed by a great passion for their fellow man that blinds them to strategic decisions. Unfortunately, good will is not enough to divert the course of complex problems.
In our time, with movements such as the social and solidarity economy, the impact economy or, within the Church, Francisco's economyIn the case of the social sector, we observe how the company tends towards the social sector and the social sector tends towards the business sector.
Those working in the private sector are increasingly looking for a work purpose that aligns with their life purpose, avoiding their negative impacts and generating positive impacts along their productive chain. In turn, social organizations are increasingly aware that their impact is limited, they must network and adopt the professional and efficient structure of the company and even a productive model.
In our acceleration sessions, we emphasize the fundamental values of human dignity and the need for all of us to contribute in an integral way.
We firmly believe that when we convey the ideal of service, even the most vulnerable can help their peers and contribute to building a more just society. Our mission is to inspire our participants to recognize their potential, contribute their skills and knowledge for the common good, and thus create a positive impact on their communities and the world at large, in line with the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church.
