Innovation Series Social Enterprise Event

The Third DutchSA Innovation Event was all about innovation in building social capital. KiK Innovation creating work opportunities for youth at risk and Barkuma for people with disability. Both organisations represented by their CEO's (Simon Rowberry from Barkuma and Louise Nobes from KiK Innovation). The Dutch flavour was provided by John van Ruth who spoke about his great idea on changing the value of social capital in business and Bert Verhoeven from the New venture Institute who facilitated interesting discussion about social entrepreneurship. As usual we had a great turn out and buzzing atmosphere, delicious platters provided by KiK Catering, a popup bar organised and staffed by the University of Adelaide. We thank our sponsors University of Adelaide and Codium Software, our volunteers and presenters for making this a great night out!

Event Sponsors

Louise Nobes, Founder KiK Enterprises

BARKUMA VIDEO
Below the video Simon Rowberry shared with us at the Innovation Series Event.

JOHN VAN RUTH's VISION
Finally, if you want to think this over and discuss with your political representatives, please find below a summary of John van Ruth's presentation.

​SOCIAL IMPACT REBATE (SIR)

​A framework for Radical, Politically Palatable Tax Reform for SOCIAL and ENVIRONMENTAL Good
By: John van Ruth
Problem we are trying to solve

• Increasing GST is not politically palatable
• Increasing reliance on Government to provide “welfare” to solve social ills.
• Black Market / Cash Economy means the government misses revenue
• Difficult to change end consumer behaviours
• Charity status (DGR) is “on” or “off” yet ignores companies that have some “For Purpose role” 
• Highly inefficient attempts to distribute welfare after the fact (i.e. “sending ambulances to the bottom of the cliff”)
• Climate change is real - Environmental sustainability is ALL of our responsibility

Opportunities

• Reward sustainable social and environmental behaviours
• Use existing GST Reporting and technology framework
• Government to create and implement a baseline score of national “Wellness” or “HSE” score of need for government interventions / budget.
• Can be implemented in stages (described later)
• Leverage world wide attraction of “Integrated Reporting”.
• Opportunity to put Social impact, Environmental impact and Human impact (HSE Score) on the balance sheet.
• A way to implement “Social Impact Bonds” on a broad scale

The idea – what does it look like

• Step one – Implement Integrated Reporting for ALL corporate entities and create a score based on Environmental, Social and Human impact.  
• Step two – Government to measure year on year changes to social conditions and movement in reliance on government funding for welfare / environmental remediation services.
• Step three – Government to create fund from reduced welfare outcomes that can be paid back (via social impact rebates) to the entities that contributed to the improved social condition (as scored on their balance sheet).
• Step four – Introduce a variable GST at point of sale for end consumers based on the social impact score of the product / service providers passed through the supply chain.

How will it be implemented

• Auditors to sign off on HSE score
• Governments to measure national Wellness/HSE outcomes year on year (i.e. reduced unemployment, reduced homelessness, reduced carbon footprint, etc, etc)
• Government to apply a rebate (SIR) based on BAS reporting linked to prior year audited HSE score for individual entities. (only if the National HSE has improved).
• Possibly implement a sliding scale DGR status based on HSE score.
• Final step - incentivise consumer behaviours to support those entities that improve society by way of a variable GST at point of purchase based on the HSE score passed through the supply chain.

Stakeholders (and impact +, -, or +/-)

• Government 
  • Rewards social change ++
  • Only pays out based on success (rebate rate published after results achieved) ++
  • Seen as being innovative ++
• Corporates
  • Puts a tangible value for them on their CSR
  • Can promote from a marketing  / recruiting perspective
• End consumers
  • Can choose to buy from good corporate citizens.