From social enterprises to credit unions, a new wave of not-for-profit businesses is pushing back against the assumption that consumerism and competition must drive the economy. In this episode, we speak with Jen Hinton of the Post Growth Institute, co-author of a forthcoming book about how the line between businesses and not-for-profit organizations doesn’t have to be as rigid as you might think.
Note: Since this episode was released, Jen has made a working draft of her book available as a free pdf.
Related links:
– How On Earth – the website for the forthcoming book.
– Beyond capitalism: not-for-profit business ethos motivates sustainable behaviour‘, by Jen Hinton and Donnie Maclurcan, Oct 2014.
– Community-Wealth.org‘s factsheets about worker cooperatives, social enterprises, municipal enterprises, community development corporations, and community financial institutions.
Photo: Goodwill Industries, one of the first entities to blur the line between business and nonprofit.
Music by: Gillicuddy (CC BY-NC 3.0), Chris Zabriskie (CC BY 3.0), and Podington Bear (CC BY-NC 3.0).
Please write to [email protected] with your comments and ideas for future topics/guests.
I don’t like the term ‘not for profit” or social enterprise. I’m going to ask my web designer to add the line ‘Just Cooperate is a for social purpose business,’ before we launch. http://www.just.coop. The primary key will be a flat wage structure, enough to survive in our monetized world. The minute any one of us succumbs to wanting more money than the next person for ourselves, the system has us, & we cannot criticise it. We cannot have a foot in both camps. Being paid more money than someone else, whether we work for a for profit company, public sector, charity or not for profit, means we are a part of the for profit world