Many of our society’s greatest challenges cannot be solved sustainably at scale by any single organization or intervention. At some point, even the best solutions can run into a wall of existing policy and market failures – where neither government or business is meeting the needs of certain disadvantaged populations. If we stay true to our goal and the problem we have chosen, in some cases we’ll need to change the system itself.
So, where does that leave a social entrepreneur? Innovation is still essential. A nonprofit or social enterprise is in a unique position to demonstrate to governments and the business community the impact and viability of a particular course of action. Once a new approach is de‐risked and shown to be feasible, it becomes a far smaller leap for others to take. For example, a new intervention may prove to save government money in the long run, perhaps by preventing health issues, poverty, or crime. Or, businesses might open their eyes to new revenue opportunities they had overlooked, perceived as too risky, or didn’t see sufficient upside to explore.
The Skoll Foundation, a longtime advocate for social entrepreneurship, is among the leading thinkers who have made the shift to a systems mindset. It has come to appreciate the inherent limits of scaling individual organizations. As a result, its focus has expanded beyond the enterprise to embrace the so‐called systems entrepreneurs who are taking on the challenge of shifting social systems, building coalitions, and influencing policy.
Rather than feed the hungry, can we open up more equitable opportunities for all, backed up by a safety net? Rather than fighting the fallout of discrimination, can we change the attitudes and laws that enable it? Rather than providing access to clean water, electricity, or financial services, can we demonstrate a viable financial model for businesses to serve those needs?
An estimated 2.5 billion people in the world need, but don’t have, the eyeglasses that would help them lead productive and fulfilling lives. To address society’s failure to bring a 700‐year‐old technology to disadvantaged populations, Jordan Kassalow founded the award‐winning social enterprise VisionSpring with a mission to ensure that everyone has affordable access to eyeglasses. Its motto: “See to learn, see to work.”
From the beginning, Jordan believed that people express their needs and desires through what they buy. Charging an affordable price gives people dignity and puts the onus on VisionSpring to provide a product customers value enough to purchase. In 2003, it started by selling 800 pairs of glasses in India and El Salvador through what it called “vision entrepreneurs” – its own dedicated sales force. After three years, it became clear that the model had limited potential for scale and was too expensive to ever become sustainable on its own. So Jordan pivoted.
VisionSpring switched to a hub‐and‐spoke model, opening optical shops that offered a wide range of styles and pricing. The income generated from selling these higher‐end products cross‐subsidized outreach by vision entrepreneurs to poorer customers in remote locations. The enterprise became more financially sustainable, but growing a direct workforce was slow and painstaking and wouldn’t allow for rapid growth into new geographies.
When Jordan met BRAC’s vice chairperson Dr. Ahmed Mushtaque Raza Chowdhury, the two men became intrigued by the possibility of leveraging BRAC’s extensive network of community health workers in Bangladesh to sell eyeglasses. There was the potential of a triple win: a huge distribution channel for VisionSpring, increased value and income potential for BRAC health network, and extended productive working years for older clients whose near vision was failing. After simplifying the exam procedure and running a small pilot, the possibility became a reality. Since 2006, the partnership has scaled to 61 of 63 districts in Bangladesh and amounts to 25% of VisionSpring’s sales. In 2017, they celebrated the millionth pair of eyeglasses sold and expanded the partnership to Uganda.
Based on its success with BRAC, VisionSpring has leveraged partnerships with over 300 organizations around the world. Yet even if it reaches its audacious goal of selling 10 million pairs of glasses by 2020, it would still represent only a tiny fraction of the total need. For vast, long‐standing societal challenges, even a highly successful organization can usually only make a small dent. And, as such problems typically lie at intersection of market and policy failures, any one sector only holds part of the solution. In the case of eyeglasses, market forces have encouraged companies to focus on more lucrative, affluent customers, leaving the poor and disadvantaged underserved. At the same time, government policies and aid organizations have prioritized more acute and deadly diseases. Thus, this simple and inexpensive intervention, which can increase productivity by 35% and generate $23 of economic impact for every dollar spent, has fallen through the cracks.
As the organization grew, Jordan and his VisionSpring colleague Liz Smith saw an opportunity to address barriers beyond their enterprise, by bringing government, the industry, and nonprofits together to tackle distribution and access problems more systemically. Thus, the EYElliance was born.
To date, 36 active members across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors have come together in the EYElliance to break through the systemic barriers. This includes promoting school programs so that kids have the necessary corrective eyewear to learn. It also uses the demonstrated success of VisionSpring and others to encourage companies in the optical business to move down market. And it seeks to integrate reading glasses into existing last‐mile health networks as another element of basic care.
Among EYElliance’s early successes in the public sphere is an agreement with the government of Liberia to develop a national plan for school eye health and to integrate basic eye care into the community health‐worker system. Such systemic shifts make it possible to imagine a day when the private sector better reaches underserved markets, governments provide a safety net so all citizens have the potential to learn and be productive, and the social sector can turn its attention to new challenges that are as yet unsolved. The evolution of VisionSpring’s path to scale is emblematic of the journey from doing some good to fixing a broken system.
As with the widespread need for eyeglasses, many of the world’s problems can’t be solved by any one organization or even one sector alone. Existing markets and policies simply may make it difficult to deliver a sustainable and scalable solution. Certainly, if you are able to succeed alone, do so. It’s much simpler.
Otherwise, consider bringing together others who have a vested interest and a piece of the puzzle. I ended up doing this while working at the US Department of State. At the time, only about a third of the world’s population was online, while everyone else risked being left further and further behind with less access to information, education, jobs, markets, community, and government services. Although many initiatives existed to bring the Internet to far‐flung places, my research indicated that most of the people without access had local coverage but weren’t using it. One major barrier was that Internet access was simply too expensive.
It turned out that tech companies wanted to see more people online so they would have more potential customers. Telecom providers were interested in new revenue streams from data services. Governments believed increased access would improve productivity and grow their economies. Nonprofits wanted to empower disadvantaged people and give them better choices. Everyone saw a benefit to their work, yet each was operating in separate spheres.
I tracked down everyone I could find from all of these vantage points and convened a roundtable at the State Department. We found 95% alignment around the challenge of affordability and the need to promote better policies and regulations that would encourage healthy market efficiencies and competition. After spending several months building consensus on the remaining 5%, we launched the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI). Today it includes over 80 organizations representing many of the large tech companies, several countries, numerous nonprofits, foreign‐aid donors, and academic institutions. Together, these organizations have gained a louder voice to advocate for change. In an early win, A4AI helped influence the government of Ghana to abolish a 20% import duty on smartphones.1 A simulation by Deloitte estimated that the reduced taxes could lead to a $370 million increase in GDP over five years due to increased mobile penetration and the resulting productivity improvements.2
With growing recognition of the complexity and scale of long‐standing social problems, multi‐stakeholder initiatives such as the EYElliance and A4AI have become increasingly common over the past decade. In order to address root causes, systems change is often required and can only be achieved through coordinated, collective action among stakeholders. National and local governments can create a favorable policy environment and set budget priorities. Commercial companies and social enterprises can build financially sustainable business models to reach underserved populations. Private philanthropy can invest in research and pilots that demonstrate and de‐risk viable solutions. Nonprofits can engage communities and advocate for their needs. Academic institutions can provide research and data to deepen understanding of issues and best practices. By coming together with a shared focus, we can deliver more than the sum of our parts.
Going out of business is not an aspiration we are taught to have. However, in the social sector the ultimate measure of success can be finding a way to make our own work obsolete. While achieving your mission may realistically take decades and new challenges will always emerge, a relentless pursuit of impact sometimes requires us to set aside the instinctive urge to perpetuate our own project or organization.
The efforts to eliminate, rather than perpetually treat, infectious diseases embodies this focus on mission achievement. To date, the global eradication of smallpox as of 1979 has been the first and only success. Still, efforts led by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and the Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program have worked with countries, international bodies, and nonprofits to whittle these respective diseases down to only a couple dozen isolated cases a year. Renewed efforts seek to eliminate malaria, and the roughly half million children’s deaths it causes each year, by 2040.
Assuming these tremendous efforts succeed, continued work would still be required to prevent a disease from reemerging. However, the needs will shift dramatically and allow major programs, initiatives, and even organizations to wind down.
One that has already put itself out of business is Freedom to Marry, a nonprofit dedicated to legalizing same‐sex marriage in the United States founded by Evan Wolfson in 2003. Evan’s 30‐plus‐year crusade started with a paper at Harvard Law School and evolved into a coordinated national strategy, the Roadmap to Victory. To implement it, Freedom to Marry nurtured a broad ecosystem of advocacy groups, state and national politicians, donors, and supportive corporations in a campaign to build public support and state‐level victories. The laser‐sharp focus paid off. In perhaps the most precipitous shift of attitudes in modern America, public support of same‐sex marriage skyrocketed from 32% in 2003 to 63% in 2015.3 This culminated on June 26, 2015 with the US Supreme Court’s momentous decision affirming the constitutional right of same‐sex couples to marry. On the day of the ruling, Evan announced in a New York Times op‐ed that Freedom to Marry would close its doors.
Most social missions will never see the sort of dramatic closure that is possible with disease eradication or a policy campaign. Despite this rarity, any mission‐oriented initiative should still strive for a day when it will no longer be needed. As USAID’s administrator Mark Green promised early in his tenure: “Every one of our development programs should look forward to the day when it can end. And every investment we make, every innovation we apply, must move a country closer to that day when it can be truly self‐reliant.”4
In a few cases, problems have the potential to be permanently resolved. More often, policy and market failures can be addressed so that the public and private sector take over. Either way, obsolescence may realistically take generations. However, we still have a responsibility to perpetually move towards systemic change. Curt Ellis, cofounder and CEO of FoodCorps, puts it this way: “Lots of nonprofits perform small acts of charity. They see a local need and respond with assistance rather than a solution.” In contrast, FoodCorps has huge ambitions to reach 100,000 US public schools with healthy food programs. Through its direct programs, it obsessively innovates to improve its impact year after year. But it is under no illusion that it can do this alone. Its strategy is to demonstrate the potential results that can be achieved, then massively scale by advocating for government policies at all levels that make healthy food environments the norm in all schools.
Similarly, nonprofit Health Leads started by embedding staff within clinics to help patients connect to housing, transportation, food, and other social services. Its aim was to help healthcare providers treat the whole person, given the wide understanding that 70% of health outcomes are tied to social and environmental factors. Over time it became clear that Health Leads’ direct services were only a Band‐Aid for a more systemic problem and that true change needed to come from health systems taking ownership themselves. Thus, Health Leads pivoted to work with healthcare providers to design, test, and implement integrated programs that meet their patients’ social needs and strengthen connections with communities. As policy changes take hold that emphasize value‐based funding and patient‐centered care, such as the Affordable Care Act and Accountable Health Communities, the incentives will continue to increase for this more holistic and equitable approach.
The strong pull to satisfy immediate needs and keep day‐to‐day operations running can be all consuming. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. While we can’t ignore the problems facing us today, we also want to avoid being trapped in a never‐ending cycle of superficial remedies that never solve the problems. Understanding the complex systems at play is essential for social change. We should never forget to ask ourselves, how could we create a world where our work will no longer be needed?