These days, it’s common to read articles about how mobile tech is exploding in emerging markets and will yield incredible impacts at the base of the pyramid (BOP). Less discussed, however, are the emerging opportunities for NGOs and social enterprises to leverage each other’s strengths to build innovative cross-sector partnerships that scale mobile tech and social impacts at the BOP.
NGOs are often experts at providing social services to grassroots last mile communities, but cannot indefinitely rely on government or donor funding to finance these operations. Financially self-sustaining models—like those of social enterprises—can increase organizational capacity. However, given their already constrained resources, NGOs are generally unable to invest in testing new structural models and projects outside of core mission scopes, and therefore opportunities for developing new skillsets and avenues for financial sustainability remain limited.
On the other hand, tech social enterprises often have commercial business models and funding to launch new products and services in the same regions where NGOs already operate. However, scaling ventures to new markets, and particularly to the BOP, typically requires talented local expertise to help navigate cultural and regulatory hurdles at a grassroots levels.
Compare these assets and needs together, and clear complementary roles for innovative cross-sector partnerships emerge.
So what do these partnerships look like in practice?
NGOs can take cautious steps to explore social enterprise models before initiating wider structural changes. Here are some great examples of how:
- Product / Service Promotion: NGOs can leverage their community trust and connections to market social enterprise mobile apps that are aligned with NGO values. In return, NGOs can receive commissions per download, per active user, per month, etc. Social enterprises know that reaching last mile consumers is incredibly difficult, and the cost per user acquired via commissions to trusted NGO partners could likely be less than the cost per user acquired via traditional in-person outreach or social media campaigns. Example: Maternal health NGOs can partner with for-profit mHealth apps to expand local user adoption and earn commissions per active user. This increases NGO financial stability by adding new revenue channels and expands the reach of mobile healthcare.
- Product Design and Distribution: NGOs and social enterprises can partner to design and sell products addressing BOP needs. This is similar to the product promotion model above, but requires more active participation than only broadcasting the availability of products through existing channels. Example: Water and sanitation NGOs can partner with social enterprises to develop low-cost latrines. In this scenario, the social enterprise might manufacture components, and the NGO could assume responsibility for encouraging local demand via sanitation marketing campaigns and also managing device installations.
- Build Network Channels: Rather than focusing on products, NGOs can leverage their positions as community leaders to develop and organize broad “agent networks” that can be combined with social enterprise ventures seeking to introduce beneficial products and services. Example: Mobile Movies is a data-intensive rural and sub-urban activation platform that provides portable cinema kits to wide networks of micro-entrepreneurial agents, identified by NGOs, who bring together communities with entertaining films. Agents then leverage gatherings to introduce educational content (health, financial literacy, etc.) and introduce new products from multinational companies. Agents document community and behavior change using a custom data collection application developed in partnership with Microsoft, and providing these services on behalf of companies doubles or triples agents’ local average incomes.
Partnering can enable NGOs to scale social impacts, increase business capacity, and test social enterprise models without committing sizeable NGO resources or donor funds. In turn, social enterprises can also scale new ventures and social impacts via trusted local NGO partners. These partnerships may very well represent the future of tech-driven social impact at the BOP.
Oliver Gilbert directs Next Billion, a Singapore-based social enterprise dedicated to engaging the next billion emerging mobile consumers. Reach him at oliver.gilbert@nextbillion.asia.
