Bill, how do you explain what seems like our current obsession with social enterprise and “doing well while doing good”?

Every 7–10 years people become particularly enamored with this idea: “Wouldn’t it be cool to make money and do good at the same time? Brilliant!” This idea turns quickly contagious — in part because most of philanthropy comes from the world of business, which makes the idea not only familiar but a fit with that world’s sense of its own superiority.

Of course, business did start the “everyone a changemaker” revolution around 1700. It said: We will make anyone with a better idea — anyone –rich, happy and respected. That ended many centuries of stagnation in terms of per capita income. Civil society had to catch up, which we only started to do in the 80s. But pulling lessons from business and being a business aren’t the same thing.

Social enterprise is important. However, these periodic enthusiasms do damage. Suddenly, the amount of money available for social enterprise multiplies and multiplies. But the deal flow does not suddenly go up by 10- or 20-fold in a year. So organizations are encouraged to change into or at least seem to change into profitable businesses. Their supporters having become profit-seeking investors, what choice do they have? This typically ends badly. Returns plummet and no one wants to talk about the craze anymore. Remember “venture philanthropy”?

These waves distort the work of the citizen sector both by pulling organizations away from their purpose and what they are good at and by pulling people towards direct service and away from systems change. That’s because systems change takes a long time and is much less likely to be financially profitable than direct service.

Read the full interview with Bill Drayton about social enterprise by Michael Zakaras at Medium.