Core Practices:

• Use market mechanisms to retain market wealth-creation at the source and use it to solve social problems caused by market failures.
• Use market mechanisms to turn social challenges into wealth-creation opportunities.
• Use market mechanisms to make resources more scalable and renewable in solving social problems.

Synergies:

• Use market research methodology to better understand where resources are, how to access them, who controls them, and how valuable they are to others.
• Research and develop appropriate technology to manage available resources (whether physical, human, relational or financial) in a more renewable manner.
• Instead of competing for the most obvious resources, research the potential of less obvious resources (e.g. intellectual property) or readily-available resources traditionally considered less practical (e.g. an efficient way to use volunteers on a larger scale).

Tensions:

• Be wary of over promising and under delivering! Make sure to invest in building knowledge and capacity to fully leverage new resources coming your way and keep up with the unusual (to you) expectations of new resource providers.
• Be mindful of the fact that research and innovation does require upfront investments, and thus always carries some risk of financial loss.

Synergies:

• Reach stakeholder groups through market mechanism and capture some of their spending power.
• Engage social sector donors and social investors in a longer-term market investment approach.
• Use your stakeholders to diversify your pool of human resources (social clients might have marketable skills, board members might have business relations, etc.).

Tensions:

• Be mindful that integrating stakeholders along the socio-economic spectrum, although beneficial in reducing social exclusion, also means forfeiting traditional fundraising practices that require marked socio-economic barriers to remain in place (e.g. traditional charity requires a reinforced sense of exclusion).
• Be mindful that engaging stakeholders through market mechanisms also means less time for traditional fundraising, which can be particularly difficult when transitioning from pure nonprofit to social enterprise.

Synergies:

• Put your social clients to work to promote a culture of self-worth so that they become aware that they can be a resource, not just a burden.
• Be honest about your successes and failures in promoting a risk-taking mindset in which it is acceptable to invest resources toward a potential for sustainable impact instead of distributing resources for risk-free but limited and unsustainable relief.

Tensions:

• Be aware that a business culture might be seen as inappropriate by some, causing the loss of valuable resources in the form of experienced staff and board members.