Who to Watch Wednesday: Social Enterprises

When looking to start a new business venture you may want to ask yourself if it's benefitting the greater good. An extremely popular realm of entrepreneurship right now are companies participating in Social Entrepreneurship.  These companies focus on making money while working towards solving social issues.  Many of these companies draw upon strategies scene in the non-profit industry which helps getting people to purchase products where they know there money also goes towards helping someone else out.  In this weeks Who to Watch Wednesday we'll look at the top four start ups that are utilizing social entrepreneurship that you may have not heard of.

4. UrbnEarth - This company is "a social venture and community dedicated to empowering urban dwellers to live a healthier lifestyle."  Their main product that they released late last year is called the UrbMat and is a mat designed to help people create gardens who live in apartments or cities where large gardens would not be possible.  The mat that comes in 3 different dimensions organizes your garden and provides the appropriate spacing for your vegetables to prosper.  The UrbMat promotes healthier living in urban areas, overall benefitting the community.

3. Who Gives a Crap? - This start up focuses on distributing toilet paper that is produced without harmful chemicals.  Three guys based their company on the fact that 2.5 billion people across the planet don't have toilets and they wanted to fix that. These dudes promise that 50% of their profits are donated to WaterAid, a non profit organization that will help build toilets in third world countries. 

2. Serengetee - This is not your average t-shirt company.  Serengetee is a clothing distributor that features fabrics and patterns from countries around the world. Every pattern, mostly featured as a small pocket on t-shirts, is associated with a non-profit organization from its originated country.  Part of the proceeds are then donated to that organization.  Serengetee currently supports over 30 different causes around the world and has donated over $50,000.

1. LSTN - Out of all the companies featured in this post LSTN has the slickest looking and most attractive product to buy.  The reason I like this company so much as a social enterprise is that it doesn't just donate money to a certain cause.  It works alongside another organization, in this case Starkey Hearing Foundation, to make sure that for every pair of headphones sold a person in needs hearing is restored.