The Elusive Model of Technology, Media, Social Development, and Financial Sustainability
This is an incremental case study for social enterprises and researchers focusing on ICTs in development, highlighting challenges in balancing mission and financial sustainability.
The essay recounts Gram Vaani's decade-long journey as a social enterprise developing ICTs for participatory media in rural and low-income settings to foster social development and community empowerment, while struggling to find a robust financial sustainability model, concluding with a call for ethical underpinnings in all enterprises.
We recount in this essay the decade-long story of Gram Vaani, a social enterprise with a vision to build appropriate ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) for participatory media in rural and low-income settings, to bring about social development and community empowerment. Other social enterprises will relate to the learning gained and the strategic pivots that Gram Vaani had to undertake to survive and deliver on its mission, while searching for a robust financial sustainability model. While we believe the ideal model still remains elusive, we conclude this essay with an open question about the reason to differentiate between different kinds of enterprises - commercial or social, for-profit or not-for-profit - and argue that all enterprises should have an ethical underpinning to their work.