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In Aspen, there was talk among the attendees of the challenges of for-profit consultancies working on philanthropic projects. There’s a lot of enthusiasm for social initiatives, but a less than clear business model. What’s the solution?
The business models of most design firms were built to serve commercial clients, so it’s difficult for them to work on the issues of poor people who can’t afford to pay on any kind of scale. There’s no lack of enthusiasm and excitement for working in this area, but it’s forced to be occasional pro bono work rather than there being a systematic approach. Then you have top private sector firms interfacing with nonprofits or social enterprise firms and there’s a square peg in a round hole problem. We need to build a better way for them to interface. So our first meeting in June 2008 basically tackled the question of what it would take for companies to develop business models that wold allow them to apply skills and expertise to the problems of poor people more often, more effectively and more expansively. Aspen is a part of building a process to allow us to implement some of these ideas.
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