socially marketing

You are not a bona fide non-profit in this country until the IRS says so with 501(c)3 certification… and we just got ours!  Previously we were partnered with a fiscal sponsor (our old friends at GivingNet) but that was a stop-gap measure until obtaining non-profit status on our own.

There are several advantages to being a non-profit, some more obvious than others.  The most well-known advantage is the ability to accept tax-deductable donations.  In a similar vein, there are discounts made available to non-profits to help lower their operational expenses.  While we are happy to be able to take advantage of such benefits, non-profit status means much more to socialmarkets.

We are serious advocates for increased transparency in the entire social sector, within which non-profits are an ideal place to start.  Leading by example is a great way to demonstrate this advocacy.  Aside from mandatory transparency measures such as the Form 990 the government requires each year, socialmarkets itself is a useful platform for increasing both transparency and accountability.

If we are going to walk our talk, then socialmarkets needs to be listed on socialmarkets.  Like any other non-profit claiming to be worthy of funding, socialmarkets should present its mission, programs, and expected outcomes… as well as the social returns (SROI) related to those outcomes.

Our hope is that our own work, along with the collective input of the socialmarkets community, will ultimately reveal tremendous social return on investment in the socialmarkets enterprise itself.  But no matter what the outcome is, we know that defining and measuring that return is a tremendously valuable exercise.