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The Untapped Power of Purpose: Why CSR Leaders Should Back Entrepreneurs Driving the Sustainable Development Goals

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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is undergoing a transformation. Once defined by philanthropy and compliance, it now plays a central role in shaping core business strategy. As ESG has become politicized, CSR leaders are being asked to deliver tangible, measurable impact that aligns with both business objectives and societal needs.

But despite growing investment, many CSR portfolios remain incomplete, and worse, may have stalled entirely. As we wrote with Triple Pundit, the fear zone is real.

A new report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), The GEM Sustainability and Entrepreneurship Report, shares insights on how CSR leaders can build more impactful and business aligned programs. Especially in emerging markets, a growing number of “social entrepreneurs” are making positive impact to people and planet, yet are being left out of corporate CSR and ESG strategies.

This is a missed opportunity. CSR leaders have a unique chance to create high-impact, mutually beneficial partnerships by activating their employees to support the social entrepreneurs already driving systemic change, as well as finding ways to integrate these social entrepreneurs into their supply chains.

A Global Movement Is Already Underway

The GEM report provides a rare, data-driven look into the motivations and actions of entrepreneurs across 60+ economies. One striking finding: a large and increasingly growing share of new entrepreneurs are driven by the desire to “make a difference in the world.”

This isn’t just true in wealthy countries. In fact, entrepreneurs in lower-income economies are often more purpose-driven. For example:

  • Over 60% of early-stage entrepreneurs in India, Guatemala, and South Africa report being primarily motivated by social and environmental impact.
  • Even in the face of economic and political instability, entrepreneurs in countries like Sudan and Brazil are significantly more likely to meet key sustainability benchmarks than their counterparts in high-income nations.
  • Growing initiatives, like the People + Planet First Certification, recognize and certify these innovators.

These individuals aren’t waiting for multinational corporations or governments to solve global problems. They’re building businesses that address poverty, health, clean energy, climate adaptation, food security, and inclusive education, and prioritizing the achievement of these markers ahead of profits.

“Purpose-driven entrepreneurship is not the preserve of wealthy nations. In many ways, it’s stronger in places where the stakes are highest.”
— GEM 2023/2024 Sustainability and Entrepreneurship Report

Purpose Alone Isn’t Enough: The Support Gap

While motivation is high for these entrepreneurs, and their impact is literally world-changing, the data shows that relatively few entrepreneurs have the support they need to reach their potential.

Why the gap? It’s not due to lack of vision or dedication. It’s structural.

Key barriers include:

  • Lack of access to capital: Impact-oriented ventures often don’t fit traditional investment criteria.
  • Limited access to high-skilled expertise: Areas like go-to-market strategy, financial modeling, digital transformation, and operations are frequently cited as unmet needs.
  • Policy and infrastructure gaps: Inconsistent regulatory support and weak local ecosystems make scaling difficult.
  • Network asymmetry: These entrepreneurs are often excluded from global innovation networks.

This is where CSR leaders can play a transformative role.

Why This Matters to CSR Leaders

If you’re responsible for CSR or ESG strategy, you likely face four interconnected challenges:

  1. Impact: Demonstrating measurable progress toward environmental and/or social targets
  2. Employees: Engaging and retaining employees through purpose-driven initiatives
  3. Profits: Contributing to your company’s bottom-line
  4. System Change: Improving the industry and system that you operate in

Supporting entrepreneurs directly addresses all four.

  • Impact integration: From clean energy to inclusive healthcare to sustainable agriculture, these entrepreneurs are creating real solutions to real SDG challenges.
  • Talent development: Engaging employees in skills-based support of social ventures fosters leadership, empathy, and cross-cultural collaboration.
  • Business contribution: From improving supply chains, retaining employees, and improving partnerships, the business benefits are vast.
  • Systems-change alignment: Social entrepreneurs operate at the intersection of business and social innovation. Their work targets root causes, not symptoms.

Companies like SAP, EY, and Reckitt (here’s a CSR case study) have begun incorporating social enterprise support into their employee engagement and leadership development programs. But the majority of CSR strategies still overlook this high-leverage opportunity.

Skills-Based Volunteering as a Win-Win-Win

Imagine a product manager at a multinational consumer goods company advising a startup in Colombia that helps smallholder farmers reduce post-harvest waste through solar-powered storage. Or a finance team member coaching a Kenyan social enterprise on sustainable pricing models.

These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re real-world examples of how skills-based volunteering can:

  • Help entrepreneurs overcome critical barriers to scale
  • Enable employees to practice purpose-driven innovation
  • Strengthen a company’s ESG credibility with authentic, community-embedded impact
  • Identify future supply and value chain partners that improve corporate operations

The GEM report underscores that entrepreneurs who receive support are far more likely to take concrete environmental and social action. CSR leaders can build scalable pipelines of support that match employee expertise with the needs of vetted, impact-driven ventures.

What This Looks Like in Action

Boomera (Brazil): Founded by Henrique Brammer, Boomera transforms hard-to-recycle waste — like cigarette butts and plastic packaging — into durable products using circular economy principles. With support from engineers, designers, and marketers, Boomera has scaled its operations across Brazil and built partnerships with major global brands.

Roseo Eólica Urbana (Spain): This urban clean energy startup, led by Ariana Martín, builds compact wind turbines for rooftops. The company emerged from a university entrepreneurship program and has grown through collaboration with technical and business mentors. Its impact is not only environmental but also educational, showing what localized, sustainable innovation looks like.

Reckitt’s Catalyst Program (global): This corporate program activates assets, money, and employees to support social innovators at scale.

The Call to Action: Back the Entrepreneurs Already Building a Better Future

The future is already being built by entrepreneurs around the world. They are:

  • Designing climate solutions in communities most affected by environmental degradation
  • Advancing gender equity in regions where women face systemic exclusion
  • Reimagining inclusive growth in economies still shaped by extraction and inequality

But they can’t do it alone.

CSR leaders have an unprecedented opportunity to update their strategy:

  • Shift from transactional CSR to transformational partnerships
  • Activate employees in ways that develop skills and strengthen culture
  • Support systemic progress on the SDGs through aligned action

If your company is serious about creating shared value, supporting the entrepreneurs already making it happen is one of the highest-leverage moves you can make.

If you want help activating your employees in support of the SDGs, we’d love to talk.

Strategy Isn’t a Plan—It’s a Choice: Lessons from Seth Godin on Scaling Social Innovation

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In a live masterclass hosted by MovingWorlds, marketing legend and systems thinker Seth Godin joined us to coach two social entrepreneurs from our global network: Anish Malpani of Without by Ashaya, and Sasibai Kimis Steenland of Earth Heir. They bravely brought their biggest strategic challenges to the table—and what followed was a rapid-fire, insight-rich conversation with timeless takeaways for any social enterprise looking to scale.

While the session was recorded, it is only available to those that registered on the MovingWorlds platform (If you are a member, you can access it here after logging in)

This session was inspired by Seth’s latest book, THIS IS STRATEGY, which we highly recommend as a mindset-shifting guide to making meaningful decisions in uncertain conditions. We also encourage every social entrepreneur to revisit four foundational episodes from Seth’s podcast Akimbo, which were recommended listening before the session:

Here’s a recap of the most resonant lessons from the session, framed to help social entrepreneurs turn strategy into scalable impact.

💡 6 Strategic Lessons for Social Entrepreneurs

1. Choose your customers, choose your future.

Every business decision cascades from who you serve. Seth reminded us that when you select your customer, you’re also choosing your constraints, your pricing power, your messaging, and your long-term impact.

Stop trying to appeal to everyone. Instead, be specific. Are you serving early adopters looking to make a statement? Or procurement officers looking to reduce ESG risk? Your choice will define your path forward.

2. Don’t race to the bottom—you might win.

Social enterprises often feel pressure to compete on price. But Seth warns that racing to be cheaper than those who exploit people and the planet means you’ll eventually compromise your mission—or lose altogether.

Instead, build value through storytelling, transparency, and integrity. As Seth said: “Patagonia isn’t the cheapest coat. The iPhone isn’t the cheapest phone. And yet, they thrive because people buy the story.”

3. Experiments are fine—but discipline scales.

Innovation gets applause. But growth comes from consistency. Seth encouraged Anish to continue exploring new verticals—but only as long as those experiments don’t dilute focus or drain resources from the core offering.

The advice? Create a clear division of labor. One team focuses on disciplined execution to cross the chasm. Another experiments—with boundaries. If you can’t sustain both, prioritize scale over novelty.

4. Strategy is subtraction.

Seth described strategy not as a to-do list, but as a “stop-doing list.” In Anish’s case, narrowing from 50 potential applications for his recycled plastic material down to 4 verticals was already progress—but still too much.

Ask yourself: “What’s the one thing we must be known for?” If you can’t answer that, you haven’t made a strategic choice yet.

5. Sell status, not just stuff.

In her effort to mainstream social procurement, Sasi (Earth Heir) faced the common challenge of convincing companies to change entrenched behaviors. Seth’s answer: flip the script.

Rather than pushing for compliance, invite them into a movement. Create a council of pioneers and offer them bragging rights. Make it about prestige, leadership, and the fear of being left off the list. As Seth said, “You’re not selling tote bags. You’re selling status.”

6. Practical empathy is your superpower.

Your mission is noble. Your team is working hard. But as Seth bluntly reminded us: your customers don’t care—unless you make them care. That means understanding what’s in their head, not just what’s in yours.

Practical empathy asks: “What story does my customer need to tell their boss, board, or community?” Make your offer align with that story, and they’ll champion your cause as their own.

“Your customers won’t care how noble your mission is. They’ll care how it makes them feel, what story they can tell, and whether buying from you earns them status in their world.”

This wasn’t a playbook or a blueprint—it was a powerful invitation to rethink how we define and execute strategy as social entrepreneurs. The biggest takeaway? Strategy is a series of hard choices in service of a future worth building.

To Anish, Sasi, and all the entrepreneurs in the MovingWorlds community: thank you for showing us what it looks like to lead with courage, curiosity, and conviction. Now let’s go make a ruckus—strategically.

You can watch the full recording if you are registered on the MovingWorlds platform. Register/login, and then you can access it here after logging in)

Podcasts, Influencers, and News You Should Follow if Your Are Working to Create Purposeful and Impact-Driven Organizations

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Curated resources to help you stay inspired, informed, and connected

📝 Bonus: Don’t forget to bookmark the public Google Sheet—a living resource for continual updates and crowd-sourced inspiration.

🎧 Podcasts Worth Your Time

🧠 Follow These Influencers

📰 Newsletters & Media Channels

🤝 Events, Communities & Media Networks to Plug Into

💎 Hidden Gems You Might’ve Missed

🔗 Bookmark the Current List

📊 Google Sheet – Living Resource

🙌 Final Thought: We Need Each Other

Solving climate, equity, and systemic challenges requires new narratives, better collaborations, and trusted information. This guide is just one way to help us all stay better connected—across roles, sectors, and borders.

And if you’re looking to go even deeper, subscribe to the MovingWorlds Blog—where we write about the intersection of corporate impact, social enterprise, and skills-based volunteering.

Why Social Enterprises Are Key to a Sustainable Global Economy — And Our World-Changing Idea to Make it Happen

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The growth of the social enterprise movement is a silver-lining of the last 18-months, and we cannot let the opportunity to scale this movement go to waste.

Earlier this week, we hosted a virtual celebration of our Fast Company World Changing Idea Honoree award, where we shared more about what is next for our S-GRID program, how it connects to our MovingWorlds Institute and Corporate/CSR partnerships, and some BIG platform improvements we’ve made to make it easier for you to build your network, grow your skills, and scale your impact.

Continue reading for key takeaways from the session, and you can also watch the full recording here.

Why Social Enterprises Are Key to Building Back Better

Navigating the challenges of this last year hasn’t been easy for anyone working in the social impact sector. But through it all, we’ve been continuously inspired and motivated by the incredible individuals and organizations in our community.

We saw social enterprises rise to the occasion, responding faster than governments or nonprofits to crises like COVID-19. And if there’s one silver lining from this year of tumultuous change, it’s been the growth of the social enterprise movement – and at MovingWorlds we’re determined not to let this opportunity to further scale this movement go to waste. We’re committed to pouring resources into our communities, social entrepreneurs, and partnerships to help the movement do even more. 

And we’re not alone – governments, corporations, and even the World Economic Forum are making major bets on the social enterprise movement, and investing accordingly. 

We missed social entrepreneurs in the first two crises of this decade; we cannot afford to miss them again.

-Chantal Line Carpentier, Chief of the New York Office of the Secretary General at UNCTAD, USA

Why all the focus on social enterprise? There’s an Archimedes quote we return to again and again that goes, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” At MovingWorlds, we firmly believe that our biggest lever for changing the global economy is social enterprise, which we define as “an organization that utilizes business principles, highly ethical internal operations, and the alignment of 100% of its resources to solve social and environmental challenges through the creation of sustainable earned revenue streams – while also positively influencing the larger systems around it.”

If we can help more social enterprises participate in the global economy by embedding into global value chains, we can help facilitate the spread of more sustainable thinking across all sectors. 

Our ‘World Changing Idea’ 

Every year, there are about $12 trillion worth of transactions just in small business-to-business spending, many of which deplete the environment while propagating inequalities. If you expand the scope to include large corporations, that number becomes even bigger, but we’re focusing on small businesses because they’re typically the ones at the very beginning or very end of supply chains – niche areas where governments and big corporations are not providing enough support.

The amount of money that these small businesses are transacting represents almost 100x more than all governments combined spent on global development in 2019. Our ‘world changing idea’ that led to the launch of our S-GRID program was: if we can divert some of that capital to social enterprises, we can help corporations meet their sustainability and equity targets by embedding social enterprises in their value chains, helping the social enterprises scale impact and revenue while making the entire system around them more sustainable.

If we continue to rely solely on charity or government to solve our most pressing global challenges, we may as well be trying to rebuild with a shovel what we’re removing with dynamite. Even corporate leaders are increasingly speaking up about how unrestrained shareholder capitalism has gone too far. But we are also living in a time when we actually believe capitalism can change – according to JustCapital, a majority of people think if we can evolve capitalism we can realize a more sustainable and equitable future.

Our 2021 Research

6 months ago, we set out on a CSR research project to find out: is this really a movement, or just a few forward-looking companies who are making real investments in meaningful social impact?

What we found is that corporations are investing more than ever before. In fact, 72% of companies mentioned the SDGs in their reporting. Still, only 14% have specific targets outlined, indicating that while a lot of companies are talking about being good, only a fraction of those are actually investing in it. Still, we have seen more and more real action and commitment by companies to invest in social enterprise, including SAP’s new 5×5 by 25 social procurement pledge, PepsiCo’s bet on regenerative agriculture, and in some cases tying CEO pay to equity targets. 

This trend will only continue to grow, and as it does, more and more companies will be approaching social enterprises as potential partners who have already figured out the unit economics of doing well by doing good. This represents a tremendous opportunity for social enterprises, as these potential partners control billions of dollars in spend that could make all the difference.

It’s important to point out here that this is NOT charity or traditional philanthropy; corporations are investing in social enterprises because it actually makes good business sense. Businesses are starting to use their most powerful assets – both financial and human – and preparing them to partner with social enterprises, and MovingWorlds is helping companies, like SAP and PayPal, make that transition.

The Opportunity of a Generation

There is a massive shift underway where corporations are investing in sustainability and equity through their core business, and social enterprises are realizing that revenue-based partnerships with these corporations are an effective way to grow beyond traditional philanthropy, grants, or impact investment. There are also an increasing number of individual professionals looking for more purpose and impact in their work who have control over parts of that spend. Combined, these three trends are resulting in a massive growth of capital being deployed towards social enterprises. That’s what we at MovingWorlds are working to accelerate. 

To help social enterprises realize this opportunity to change the economy, MovingWorlds focuses specifically on what’s known as the “pioneer gap.” 

As you can see on the left-hand side of the social venture growth curve graphic above, when an idea is initially developed, it’s easy to access capital and support: there are grants available, new business competitions, accelerators, and all kinds of potential investment. This is the pioneer gap.

But as soon as an idea moves into initial testing and hits the reality of the market, things start to get tough. More investment is needed to improve the product, adapt to customer feedback, and iterate on the prototype. In this and the subsequent stages, it’s hard to access talent or financial capital as even “early-stage” impact investors won’t get involved until the idea is proven. Once there’s proven scale potential, as you see on the far right side of the graphic above, then it becomes easy again to access resources and impact investments.

What MovingWorlds is focused on doing is providing support to cross that pioneer gap. We go into the places where financial capital won’t, and when we do, we bring corporate procurement spending and human capital with us. And if we can do that correctly, it will truly change the world – helping social enterprises grow their world-positive ideas while making corporate value chains sustainable and equitable.

Platform Updates to Make You Even More Impactful

MovingWorlds now operates a single platform where corporations, ecosystem builders, social enterprises, and passionate individuals can learn, connect, and work together to build the sustainability and equity of the global economy. 

That means more learning, community, and networking opportunities for professionals, more direct support and revenue opportunities for social enterprises, and more connections and partnerships across value chains and sectors.

Starting with social enterprises, we help them access the connections, resources, and learning they need to grow their operations. Our community platform creates peer-based connections, our learning management system provides learning and interactive guides to build skills and processes, and along the entire journey, social enterprises can use our Experteering network to request:

  • An expert to come lead a training for any number of employees
  • An Expert Advice Call to get subject matter expertise on any topic
  • A Connection to build a network at a company or in an industry
  • Aa Coach and/or Mentor for ongoing support
  • A Pro Bono Project for dedicated skills-based consulting or project-based work.

As we have for nearly a decade, we also support professionals that want to learn more. They can also access our community site, learning resources, and provide support to our social enterprises. Increasingly, we also host events that engage both professionals and social enterprises together, like design challenges.

And then for corporations and CSR leaders, we operate a fully managed platform and service to scale social impact programs by educating and engaging employees to build more sustainable and equitable supply chains.

The Next 10 Years

We believe that our world-changing idea award is not a recognition of past efforts, but rather an indication that our efforts will change the world, and we have every intention of making that a reality. We invite you to join us.