Social Enterprise

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Social enterprises are ventures that use business models to advance a primarily social mission. Well-designed social enterprises are sustainable, scalable and offer financially robust mechanisms for addressing poverty and its ill effects. By identifying business opportunities that exist within development programs, social enterprise programs help turn finite aid projects into sustainable, market-driven economic ventures that help develop communities over the long-term.

A social enterprise is like any other business in that it works to deliver goods and services to make a profit. The difference is that they are driven by their social and environmental purposes and any profit made is reinvested towards achieving these purposes.

The government defines social enterprises as “businesses with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximize profit for shareholders and owners.”

Social enterprise is an umbrella term and encompasses a broad range of social and environmental business. These include credit Unions, cooperatives, community-owned enterprises and trading arms of charities to list just a few.

Social Enterprises operate in almost every industry in the Bangladesh, from health and social care to renewable energy, from retail to recycling, from employment to sport, from housing to education.


A Social enterprise lies at the intersection of business and traditional non-profit.

Social enterprises are self-sustaining cause-driven business entities that create social impact by offering solutions to social challenges and reinvesting their surplus to sustain and generate greater impact.

Social enterprises are businesses which trade for a social purpose, re-invest surpluses into their social objective, and make themselves accountable for their actions, rather than simply maximizing profits for owners and shareholders. Social enterprise is a growing and dynamic sector of the Bangladesh economy. It is creating jobs for disadvantaged groups, empowering women, and addressing social exclusion across the country.

One kind of business structure that has grown rapidly in the world. Inrecent years is the “social enterprise”. … In other words, a social enterprise is a proper business that makes its money in a socially responsible way. These ventures are not necessarily formed to reinvest all profits into the communities.