Under the Hood

Understanding How to Drive a Thriving Business Model

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Whether you are running a for-profit business or a social impact organization, understanding the strength of your business model and offerings is critical.

There are a few nuances between for-profit and social impact business models largely around for-profit transactions being two dimensional (seller + buyer) and social impact multi dimensional (beneficiary + funder(s) + service delivery organization).

	For Profit	Social Impact
Value Proposition	Relieve pain and/or create gains for purchaser	Relieve pain and/or create gains for community
Infrastructure	Systems, processes, labor, and partners to deliver the value proposition	Systems, processes, labor, and partners to deliver the value proposition
Cost Structure	All costs of infrastructure, marketing, sales to deliver value proposition	All costs of infrastructure, marketing, fundraising to deliver value proposition
Customers	Single or multi-sided segment(s), how to engage & communicate	Community - who, how to engage & communicate Funders - who, how to engage & communicate
Revenue Streams	Which customer persona will interact with what value proposition to drive revenue	Which funding persona will interact with what value proposition to drive revenue (and what is that sustainability)