Epilogue

We’re in a race. Can we social enterprisers, all together, make enough progress to turn enough things around, fast enough, to make a difference in the way things are headed?

We have to. And we can. If we remember the key words: “all together.”

In no other field of endeavor have we witnessed the remarkable sense of cooperation that characterizes this world of social enterprise. All across the globe, forums, conferences, Listserv groups, publications, blogs, and endless other spaces are springing up where social enterprises freely share what they have learned with others. It is as though each of us belongs to an entire open-sourced industry that is growing at blazing speed.

We are trying to create a common good that is threatened by the competitive hunger of business as commonly practiced. Cooperation with each other is our hope and our secret weapon. It is the one strategy that traditional business is constitutionally incapable of practicing, co-opting, or adapting to.

It works because the common good builds on itself. Healthy people create healthy communities. Healthy communities protect healthy environments. Healthy environments foster healthy people. And the circle continues.

We are deeply appreciative of the wonderful social enterprise colleagues who shared their insights for this book. We are better practitioners after writing this book than we were when we started. We have learned from our colleagues just as we hope you will in turn learn and then teach others.

At times in your journey you will feel that you have no -where to turn for counsel—lonely moments when the issues at hand will require measures of sensitivity, wisdom, judgment, and courage that are not available from your staff, your board, your friends, or your family. It will be in those instances that you can seek out a fellow social enterpriser.

In fact, that’s how this book came about in the first place. For years, long before a book ever dawned on us, we would call each other whenever we needed advice or faced a struggle. Never did we fail to hear exactly the point of view we needed to hear and proceed with confidence toward a better outcome. We never would have become coauthors if we hadn’t first become friends and co-mentors.

It is in this same spirit that we offer ourselves to you, for we can keep what we have been so freely given only by giving it away. Drop us an e-mail or give us a call if there’s ever anything we can do to help you create the common good. We’ll be sure to do the same.