“Social Business” is a term coined by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammed Yunus in his two bestseller books-“Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism” and “Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs”.
A social business seeks to maximize human and environmental well-being and other social concerns. For-profit-businesses focus on the maximization of profits for shareholders. However, a social business differs from a nonprofit in several ways. While non-profit organizations rely on outside funding through government and donor support, social businesses are self-reliant by investing a portion of their profits back into the business. Much like a for-profit-organization, a social business still relies on selling goods and services to the consumer, but social businesses redirect the remainder of their profits towards local communities. Social businesses offer a long term benefit to society in not just to consumers, but to society as a whole.