Co-Profit Model
For-profit businesses can and should co-exist with non-profit organizations in the same working environment, actively participating across boundaries to help each other more effectively fulfill their missions. We maintain that this integrated working environment “co-generates” economic and social value, calling this a “co-profit” business model.
The co-profit concept was born of the idea that success for non-profits requires strong relationships with revenue-generating enterprises and individuals, and that in order for a for-profit enterprise to thrive in the 21st century; it must understand and address its social context.
Globally, we face the massive threat of “unsustainability.” While we tend to view social and ecological problems – such as climate disruption, terrorism, ecosystem destruction and poverty – as separate, hierarchical and competing, they are actually systemic and interrelated. Therefore, we contend that achieving sustainability must come from a better, interrelated system that combines market forces and non-profit initiatives, and is scalable and replicable.
It’s clear that the industrial revolution and the continued economic growth and acceleration of business activity over the past 50 years have been primary drivers of unsustainability. While business has inarguably brought us great progress and improvements in quality of life worldwide, it has also overshot ecological limits and undermined social systems in pursuit of its own growth and power.
In response to these problems, the non-profit sector has grown tremendously in recent decades. There are 1.5 million non-profits in the United States addressing social and environmental issues, with combined revenues of approximately $700 billion from individual, corporate and foundation giving, and assets valued at $2 trillion. While much good work has been done, it’s been eclipsed by the continued deterioration of social and ecological systems.
Many of us donate a generous portion of our income and volunteer a generous amount of our time to non-profits. However, we must keep in mind how much more of our time and resources we commit to our business and consumer activities that oftentimes create and exacerbate (though potentially in subtle or indirect ways) the problems we aim to solve.