Giving Compass' Take:

• Hugh Jackman launched a social enterprise by selling his own brand of coffee and opening two cafes that donate all the proceeds to various charitable causes.  

• Will other celebrities decide to follow suit and enter the field of entrepreneurship? How can this field benefit from celebrity influence, and what are the disadvantages? 

• Read about other stories in which people turned to creating successful social enterprises.

Years ago, before ever setting out to improve the world, actor Hugh Jackman decided to become the self-appointed understudy of another famous actor turned social entrepreneur: the late Paul Newman. In the 1980s, the Cool Hand Luke icon slapped his name and face on the side of salad dressing and announced he was giving all the profits to charity. Newman’s Own has since become a model for how so-called philanthropic enterprises should be run: It’s expanded to more food products and donates around $30 million annually to hundreds of charities.

Jackman read Newman’s book Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good. He met privately with famed social entrepreneur, Nobel Prize winner, and microfinance champion Muhammad Yunus, who encouraged him to start a business. At one point, he spotted a similarity: Newman’s Own started with a homemade recipe that Paul Newman made and friends raved about. Jackman felt a similar passion for coffee, but was actually pretty concerned about how it got made. “I love my coffee so I want it to be good,” he says. “I want it to be high quality. I also want to know that it’s nourishing the people who work to plant it, to harvest it, to roast it.”

So in 2009, he traveled to Ethiopia with World Vision, a Christian humanitarian group that invests in ways to build stronger communities against poverty and injustice in the developing world. Jackman’s plan was to shoot a documentary about the impact of Fair Trade certification on coffee growers there, but after connecting with a local farmer named Dukale, he decided to also launch his own philanthropic enterprise to expand the marketplace for small farmers.

Today, the Laughing Man cafés operate as a philanthropic enterprise, pouring all proceeds into charitable programs that support better health, housing, and educational initiatives within fair-trade farming communities.

Read more about celebrity social enterprise by Ben Paynter at Fast Company