Our social enterprise
1. WHAT IS A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE?
A social enterprise operates as a business. Like any business, a social enterprise seeks to make profit and succeed commercially.
The key difference is in the way a social enterprise operates.
Social enterprises organise how they operate and how they use their profits to transform social or environmental areas of need, prioritising benefit to people and to our planet.
We believe the social enterprise structure will allow the flexibility and responsiveness required to operate a successful values-driven business and affect maximum change, which for example may be more difficult for the cumbersome governance structure of a charity or nonprofit.
Social enterprises must do three things:
- Have a defined primary social, cultural or environmental purpose consistent with a public or community benefit, and
- Derive a substantial portion of their income from trade, and
- Invest efforts and resources into their purpose such that public/community benefit outweighs private benefit (translation: at least 50% of profits towards a social purpose).
2. WHAT IS OUR PURPOSE?
Our primary mission is to improve early life care in the domains of
- breastfeeding and lactation
- feeds
- unsettled infant behaviour (sleep and cry fuss problems)
- sensory motor development
- and perinatal mental health
using evidence-based, clinically effective tools, and to increase the accessibility of this healthcare.
3. WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
Early life care in the domains of breastfeeding and unsettled infant behaviour continues to be historically underfunded and under-researched. Common clinical interventions often don’t align with the science. Families, especially mothers, often receive conflicting or ineffective advice.
Yet the research tells us that the neurological pathways formed in the first months and years of life affect mental health and relationship patterns for humans lifelong.
Breastfeeding problems and unsettled infant behaviour also predispose to postnatal anxiety and depression.
4. HOW WE ARE PURSUING THESE MISSIONS
This is our roadmap and dream as a business
Phase 1: Become a self-sustaining business (current phase)
First, we need to finish building our online ecosystem, stabilise, be able to pay our employee salaries, pay our independent contractors, and pay off our debts.
Phase 2: Growth
Grow profits and use these profits to continue to grow and expand the business to make NDC or the Possums programs more broadly available and more easily accessible around the world.
Phase 3: Progression
At the same time as we continue to make positive change in early life care through our own work, we now can also now invest profits in further research and education in the field. We continue to use profits to make our education affordable or free for socially disadvantaged people.
Phase 4: Expansion of scope
This phase continues to include everything from phases 2 and 3. With higher profits, we may also look to make a positive impact in areas outside of our domains of healthcare, or even in areas outside healthcare itself. We will specify these areas when the time comes, in response to where we believe we can make the most positive impact at that time and what areas we perceive as having the most global need.