What are some of the best practices and tools for managing a hybrid or blended social enterprise model?

It's important to align your marketing and communication strategies to highlight your unique value proposition. Ensuring it resonates with both your social mission and business objectives.

Choose Purpose First: Identifying a ‘Higher Purpose’ is your opportunity to transcend organizational goals or profit margins. It is about discovering a deep-seated calling that resonates with the personal and collective ethos of the enterprise’s founders and team. Next, consider a focused list of compelling social problems that align with this purpose. Reflect on personal connections to these issues and then focus on those that ignite curiosity and passion. Narrowing down social problems is crucial to ensure that the social enterprise’s efforts target issues where it can make the most significant impact. Now, the stage is set to develop a focused, impactful approach and maximize its potential for creating meaningful and sustainable change.

Defining your impact and value proposition is essential for a hybrid or blended social enterprise model. It shows how your social mission and business model are aligned. To do this, I think the key things you need to: - Learn continuously about the social issue you are solving and how it changes over time - Evolve your understanding and adapt your business model accordingly and always be aware of the negative effects of changes - Transfer your understanding to every executive in your organization as soon as possible - Have frequent and short trainings (like half a day every two or three months) to discuss your social mission, problem statement, beneficiaries, customers, and measurement tools.

In my opinion, defining your impact and value proposition is the first and most fundamental thing to do for ANY social or other enterprise, regardless of its model.

Managing a hybrid or blended social enterprise model involves balancing both profit-driven and social impact objectives. Clearly define your business and social impact objectives. Ensure that your mission and goals are well-articulated and understood by all stakeholders.

The model should reflect the enterprise's core values and enable the management of potential conflicts. For instance, Santos, Pache, and Birkholz (2015) suggest aligning business models with organizational design to prevent mission drift and maintain financial sustainability. This could mean forming a benefit corporation to balance social goals with a profit motive, or a non-profit with a for-profit subsidiary, allowing for both social impact and commercial activities.

Options for legal forms and accordingly governance structures vary enormously between countries. I would strongly recommend to meet with organisations working with different forms and governance structures to better understand the pros and cons of the different options in practice, not just in theory.

Choosing the right legal structure and governance for a hybrid or blended social enterprise model is crucial for aligning the organization with its dual objectives of financial sustainability and social impact. The legal structure determines how the business is governed, taxed, and regulated.

Managing finances and securing funding for a hybrid or blended social enterprise model involves careful planning, strategic decision-making, and a balance between financial sustainability and social impact objectives.

Assess and prioritize engagement with the actors in your current sphere of influence as your potential customers, beneficiaries, or partners for your social enterprise. Rank actors based on two dimensions: Impact and Interest. 1. How impacted are they by the social problem you’re trying to solve? What might their impact be if they were involved in a solution? What are the risks if you don’t include them? 2. Interest: What is their likelihood of engaging with your social enterprise solution? How might you ensure that their involvement is productive and proactive, their needs are met, and their voices are heard? Prioritize those who rank high on both impact and interest and how you’ll engage those with lower impact or less interest.

A hybrid social enterprise model also needs to have 'adaptive governance'. This involves iterative processes and flexible management structures that can respond to shifting goals and market conditions. For example, Masiero and Ravishankar (2019) discuss integrating digital and non-digital capabilities to address societal challenges, which requires continuous adaptation and reassessment of operational practices to stay effective and relevant.