Sustainability Defined
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 innovate and fulfill their missions. We maintain that this integrated working environment “co-generates” innovative, 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 “un-sustainability.” 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. 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.
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. It’s clear that the industrial revolution and the continued economic growth and acceleration of business activity over the past 50 years have been the primary drivers of un-sustainability. To address these systemic issues, we contend that achieving sustainability must come from a better, interrelated system that combines market forces and non-profit initiatives in a profitable, scalable and replicable manner.