One thought re self-funding charities is that it might best for entities to focus on what they are best at: charities on interventions and for-profit businesses on providing goods and services to consumers or businesses.
A model that funds charities while enabling entities to focus on what they do best is Profit for Good, in which charities are in the vast majority shareholder position of for-profit companies. I explain why I believe that this model could be quite powerful in my TEDx Talk here:
it might best for entities to focus on what they are best at
Off the top of my head it seems like there would be reasonable exceptions to this. I think the necessary conditions would be in markets where a handful of companies control global development & distribution of a necessary thing that affects people across the globe (usually due to economies of scale & intensive development costs + IP control).
Insulin manufacturers, for example, might be justified in charging richer consumers (or more likely charging their governments & insurers), but would also be the best-placed actors to donate their products to poorer people. Specifically, they would be better-placed than separate organisations which use donations to buy & distribute insulin at low margins, because they’re still paying for the manufacturer’s margins. It equally doesn’t make sense for an insulin manufacturer to just target poorer people and run entirely on donations because of the cost-effectiveness they’d achieve by scaling globally.
But I’m not super sure on this. There are definitely advantages to having focus and I’m not sure really how many orgs fit this criteria, or, indeed, how many would practically do this given the overwhelming force of the profit motive.
One thought re self-funding charities is that it might best for entities to focus on what they are best at: charities on interventions and for-profit businesses on providing goods and services to consumers or businesses.
A model that funds charities while enabling entities to focus on what they do best is Profit for Good, in which charities are in the vast majority shareholder position of for-profit companies. I explain why I believe that this model could be quite powerful in my TEDx Talk here:
Off the top of my head it seems like there would be reasonable exceptions to this. I think the necessary conditions would be in markets where a handful of companies control global development & distribution of a necessary thing that affects people across the globe (usually due to economies of scale & intensive development costs + IP control).
Insulin manufacturers, for example, might be justified in charging richer consumers (or more likely charging their governments & insurers), but would also be the best-placed actors to donate their products to poorer people. Specifically, they would be better-placed than separate organisations which use donations to buy & distribute insulin at low margins, because they’re still paying for the manufacturer’s margins. It equally doesn’t make sense for an insulin manufacturer to just target poorer people and run entirely on donations because of the cost-effectiveness they’d achieve by scaling globally.
But I’m not super sure on this. There are definitely advantages to having focus and I’m not sure really how many orgs fit this criteria, or, indeed, how many would practically do this given the overwhelming force of the profit motive.