What makes a successful social venture?

Social ventures are to solve social issues in a new way. Many entrepreneurs have a strong will to solve social issues. However, in some cases, people focus too much on the impacts of a potential product or the service and pay little attention to the customer experiences, marketing and sustainability. Therefore, although the product or the service per se is excellent, it does not receive wide welcome. It brings the question to me that what makes a successful social venture?

First, I believe it is human. In my high school, there is a senior students who starts a student organization to help the children in an AIDS village in China. The members go to the village to play with the children there during summer vocations and bring the children clothes and food. The organization has the goal of treating every child fair even with the one who is infected with AIDS. The local media comes and interviews the founder and the school tells the story to every students newly enrolled. However, the organization dismissed when the student graduates. High school students in China focus more on study than social work. To run a successful social venture, the founder have to make sure that the members are on the same page with him or her and they really share the common goal.

Secondly, the product or the service should be user-friendly. From the financial perspective, in order to at least cover the costs, the products or the services must be attractive to users. Whatever the venture is, users bring revenues. I am very impressed with the bicycle which is actually a water cleansing system. I talked this to my friend. He comes up with one question. Are the roads in those areas suitable for riding? In most of the rural areas, roads are not well built. It will not be easy to ride bicycles and not to mention that there is almost no transportation to rural areas. Thereby, this brilliant product cannot be widely used.

Last but not the least, it is the sustainability and competitive. Currently, I am working on a project to keep children in Juarez from drug cartels. Juarez is the place where the project starts. In the future, the project will expand to the whole Mexico. Also, the model may not only be applied to protect children but also in other circumstances. Therefore, we are thinking of a replicable model such as recruiting university students as volunteers. However, a replicable model also means that it is easy for other venture to enter the market. How to let the venture maintain the competitiveness is another problem worth considering.

To sum up, from my point of view, to run a successful social ventures are almost the same as other ventures. Customers’ needs are still the essential to the ventures. Also, the products or the services still need a group of people to do the marketing thing.