Part 3

Using Market Forces to Create Social Value

This section explores three innovative ways of bringing the business and social sectors together to create sustainable partnerships that tackle huge social problems impacting large numbers of people. Far different from corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, these partnerships create a hybrid adaptation that establishes a profitable business for the sole (soul) purpose of supporting, fueling growth, and sustaining a social purpose.

Profit is not a dirty word—if profits are recycled back into the business or used to sustain or increase employment or wages and provide access to opportunities for those who are marginalized, impoverished, or in temporary need. In many cases, profits placed somewhere in the project's trajectory can augment the impact and provide incentives for sustainability. For example, DMT Mobile Toilets creates employment, livelihood, and ownership with profits generated from the pay-for-use model; Chenelet uses a for-profit paper pallet business as a base for generating a public eco-housing enterprise; Ciudad Saludable creates micro-enterprises out of garbage collection. They are all examples of triple-bottom-line missions that provide measurable impact from extracting the social value in market forces. They are all part of the evolving “business social sector.”

Reflections by William Jefferson Clinton

In the ten years since I started the Clinton Foundation, the world has become more interdependent than ever. Successful countries need not only a vigorous private sector and an effective government but also innovative nongovernmental groups that can bridge the gap between what the private sector can produce and the government can provide. At their best, nongovernmental groups work with the private sector and government to solve problems and seize opportunities faster, at lower cost, and with greater impact than any sector could acting alone. Social entrepreneurs are in a unique position to reduce the drastic inequalities and instabilities that undermine the promise of our interdependent world.

We started the Clinton Global Initiative to create these kinds of partnerships between world leaders, business executives, and innovative nongovernmental groups to solve some of the world's most pressing issues. CGI members make Commitments to Action—concrete, measurable steps toward improving lives that rely on sustainable, market-based solutions. As of 2011, CGI partnerships have already improved the lives of 300 million people in more than 180 countries and are valued in excess of $63 billion.

In 2009, a commitment made through CGI launched a program that lets Nigerian patients identify counterfeit prescription drugs using their cell phones. In a country where 80 percent of drugs are corrupted, patients can now text a code found on their prescription bottle and receive an authenticity report directly from the company, Sproxil. Today, this technology has been used more than a hundred thousand times, and with the support of the Nigeria Food and Drug authority, Sproxil has agreed to expand its efforts to protect a million more patients in the developing world while simultaneously supporting the legitimate pharmaceutical companies who produce the medicine.

As our worldwide initiatives foster partnerships between private enterprise and social ventures, fresh, innovative approaches are often the keys to success. In Peru and Colombia, the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative developed a web-based system to keep in constant touch with all aspects of its various development projects, including successful new collaborations between small suppliers and hotels in Cartagena. By creating a monitoring system that is accessible on computers, smart phones, and tablets, we no longer have to wait until a program ends to analyze results; we're able to expand what's working and correct what isn't while the work is in progress.

In Seoul, South Korea, the Clinton Climate Initiative is working with a housing contractor on an 830-acre development whose emissions will be roughly 80 percent below typical current levels. The venture will create a district heating and cooling facility powered largely by sewer heat, and build a fuel cell–based combined heat and power plant that will provide up to 20 megawatts of power.

If we are to build an interdependent world of shared opportunities, shared prosperity, and shared responsibilities—one where we celebrate our differences but affirm the primary importance of our common humanity—we will rely even more heavily on strategies that are sustainable, replicable, and measurable. Government, the private sector, and NGOs must continue working together to find innovative ways to keep widening the circle of opportunity and responsibility.

William Jefferson Clinton served as the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001). In 2001 Clinton established the William J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes such as the prevention of AIDS and global warming.