Page 26 - Sustainability and entrepreneurship for CSO's and CSO networks Cambodia 1 November 2018

CHAPTER 8: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Entrepreneurship and local CSOs
We know that receiving government or donor funding is a hard job that may result in short term project funding for which you have to maintain extensive administrative and reporting systems. External donors, in many cases, do collect their funds from the general public through tax money, gifts and sponsorships. Recipient organisations follow the donors’ policies and adapt to the administrative requirements. This may create dependency, loss of autonomy and loss of focus. Today, some CSOs choose to make a transition towards an entrepreneurial non- profit organisation because of growing competition, budget restrictions and the desire to take faith in their own hands.
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Case
An organisation for the blind in Ethiopia specialises in vocational training, employment for young blind men and women and the sales of home made brushes, brooms, carpets and wooden toys. To get hold of project funding the organisation accepted to educate blind persons on HIV/AIDS, while the organisation has no expertise on the subject. Only later the organisation realised that it could make easy money when collaborating with four other organisations for the blind, working in the same field. They joined efforts and assets, expelled on mutual competition, harmonised production, sales and distribution and are now doing better than before.
Having an appealing mission does not automatically attract and retain donors. They want to know exactly what you can achieve, for whom, whether the organisation creates added value and how the organisation distinguishes itself from others. CSOs may argue that an entrepreneurial approach to a social issue will compromise the mission and that it should be government or international CSOs’ responsibility to finance non-profit organisations. Reality has changed. CSOs that want to survive and to achieve their mission in the long-term are to change and to become more business oriented. In their study Heidi Dahles and Sothy Kieng (2014) Commercialization in the Non-Profit Sector: The Emergence of Social Enterprise in Cambodia, that the growing number of CSIO’s with commercial activities, 21% in 2014, state that their business makes them free from excessive donor influence and therefore are able to better adhere to their mission.
In the next chapters we focus on CSOs and their networks acting as social firms, keeping balance between their social and business (earning income) mandates.
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