Start with Deep Community Insight
The most common failure in social enterprise is designing solutions without adequate community participation. Invest in rigorous needs assessment, participatory research, and co-design with the communities you aim to serve. Solutions designed without community input rarely achieve lasting impact.
- Conduct rigorous needs assessment before designing solutions
- Use participatory research methods with target communities
- Co-design interventions with community members and leaders
- Test assumptions early and iterate based on community feedback
Build a Sustainable Business Model
Social impact without financial sustainability is charity, not enterprise. Develop clear revenue models, test them early, and build in multiple funding streams — grants, earned revenue, impact investment, and corporate partnerships. Premature scaling kills more social enterprises than lack of funding.
- Develop clear and tested revenue models early
- Build in multiple funding streams: grants, earned revenue, investment
- Prove the model at small scale before expanding
- Scale with systems and talent in place, not before
Measure What Matters
Define your Theory of Change from day one. Identify the outcomes you are trying to achieve, build measurement systems into your operations, and report your social returns alongside financial ones. At Dev Support, we support social enterprises at every stage — from design and incubation to scale and evaluation.
- Define Theory of Change and outcomes from the outset
- Build measurement systems into operational design
- Report social returns alongside financial performance
- Use SROI analysis to demonstrate impact to investors and funders