Making a case for social entrepreneurship support: A case study of the South Korea COVID-19 recovery programme supported by Google.org

Supported by a $2 million grant from Google.org, Youth Business International (YBI) has led a COVID-19 recovery programme in South Korea over the last two years, focused on supporting young social entrepreneurs and boosting their capacity to grow their profitable impact businesses sustainably. As the programme draws to a close, we reflect on the key learnings of delivering this targeted support for social enterprises, and how this support can continue to be delivered effectively at scale.

Social entrepreneurship refers to enterprises and ventures that aim to address social, cultural, or environmental issues through innovative business solutions. According to the 2024 State of Social Enterprise report, there are about 10 million social enterprises globally, generating roughly $2 trillion in revenue each year while creating a positive impact and supporting 200 million jobs across various sectors from agriculture to financial services. The report also states that one in two social enterprises around the world is led by a woman, compared to the one-in-five ratio for conventional enterprises. Social enterprises globally are seeking over $1.1 trillion in external financing.

In 2022, in the post-COVID-19 landscape, according to an ILO survey, 85.1% of social enterprises in South Korea reported reduced cash flows and 83.7% reported a drop in sales.  Currently, the government provides an ecosystem that supports and nurtures aspiring entrepreneurs, while private impact investors and financiers focus on scaling and growth. The collaboration between public and private entities plays a crucial role in supporting new businesses throughout their entire lifecycle.

South Korea COVID-19 Recovery Programme supported by Google.org

YBI partnered with two South Korean members from their global network of over 60 enterprise support organisations, Work Together Foundation and Impact Square who both have headquarters in Seoul, to deliver tailored solutions to improve the capacity of social entrepreneurs in South Korea.

Work Together Foundation designed and delivered a hybrid project that combined in-person intensive training, mentoring and networking with online training. Impact Square focused on delivering online, digitally enabled business growth support through the development and launch of Impact Circle, an innovative online learning and networking platform.  Combined, the programme reached over 23,300 young people and provided in-depth support for 3,867 social entrepreneurs.

These two approaches to the programme were successful in distinct ways, yet each encountered unique challenges in supporting young people and addressing the specific difficulties faced by social entrepreneurs. At the close of the programme, the teams consulted with entrepreneurs and evaluated their project experiences to assess the effectiveness of their interventions and identify the ongoing challenges faced by social entrepreneurs. A review of these reports revealed five key lessons.

1. The Power of Community

Community building and peer support are crucial for fostering collaboration, sharing resources, and providing emotional support. Work Together Foundation built a community for female entrepreneurs where they can come together to learn and share. Social entrepreneurs, like many conventional entrepreneurs, seek communities of similar entrepreneurs to collaborate, ideate together, offer peer-to-peer learning and mentoring, and connect with successful business leaders for inspiration and insights.

Sometimes, they simply need a community to receive assurance and the emotional energy and drive to push on. Networking events were reportedly the most helpful. “Being able to connect with representatives of social ventures and talking about the common interest we have was very empowering to me,” says Dream Yang, a young entrepreneur who was supported through the project by Work Together Foundation. “There are not many networking opportunities for social ventures. By meeting like-minded people, I was able to share ideas with them which gave me new insights.”

These communities such as the Women’s Specialized Course, which continues to meet as an informal peer support group facilitated by the Work Together Foundation, empower entrepreneurs by offering diverse perspectives, practical advice, and a sense of belonging, driving their success and impact.

Impact Square’s online platform, Impact Circle, is designed to foster an inclusive virtual community. This space is vital for social entrepreneurs, providing a forum where they can share insights, ask questions and seek support from like-minded peers. The online community cultivates collaboration and mutual growth among its members, with the aim to drive impact in social entrepreneurship.

2. Innovative and Inclusive Curriculum & Programme Development

Providing entrepreneurship education support to social entrepreneurs requires innovation, adaptability, and flexibility on the part of enterprise support organisations (ESOs). Understanding the unique challenges of social entrepreneurs globally and in specific regions allows ESOs to craft well-thought-out curricula that address their fundamental issues.

Work Together Foundation, through research and understanding of the sector, had a deep understanding of the capacity gap among female social entrepreneurs, the barriers to their entrepreneurship education and support and the measures needed to remove these obstacles and to offer them the knowledge and opportunity to grow. Work Together Foundation tailored its project to support women in various aspects of their entrepreneurial journey, addressing work-family balance, leadership, mental health, confidence building, and networking.

Impact Square’s approach to continued content development has been to leverage partnerships. So far, they have onboarded 26 partners who contribute to developing content for the Impact Circle platform. By embracing partnerships and leveraging the knowledge available outside their organisation, they have developed an innovative and inclusive curriculum.

Both Work Together Foundation and Impact Square developed bespoke curricula that not only addressed the fundamental areas of business for any entrepreneur such as financial accounting, HR, law, marketing, etc., but they also focused on learning areas specific to social entrepreneurship and the challenges faced by social enterprises. Sessions included funding models for social enterprises, balancing between impact and profit, impact investing and networking.

3. Building a Supportive Ecosystem

It is important to build an ecosystem of well-informed and genuinely interested stakeholders, ranging from funders to policymakers, government, and the private sector, who understand and appreciate the dynamics of social entrepreneurship and impact investing. These stakeholders must recognise and advocate for the need for funding structures and business policies that understand this critical dynamic when providing access to funding and market support.

Impact Square collaborated with the Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Startups to research the impact of social enterprises on the economy with the aim to use the data to advocate for more support and resources for social entrepreneurs and to build a supportive ecosystem.

Impact Square also worked with local governments such as Yeongju-Si and the Gyeongbuk Centre for Creative Economy & Innovation to foster local entrepreneurial ecosystems and to generate engagements and discussions on existing policies and their effectiveness in combating local degradation as they affect social entrepreneurship. “The social ventures and SMEs are scattered all over the country. Fortunately, there are organizations like us outside of Seoul that support social entrepreneurs,” says Minsu Kim, COO of Impact Square. “Forming partnerships, offering cooperation, and using the connections we have made to reach out to social businesses to introduce Impact Circle has helped form a community.”

4. Access to Funding & Market 

Like every conventional business, access to funding and market continues to remain one of the biggest challenges for social enterprises. This challenge is even more pronounced as they compete for limited resources with traditional businesses that often have faster and higher profit yields. Despite this, social enterprises must also deliver on impact mandates. Social enterprises require dedicated funding and market support to ensure they are not disadvantaged compared to traditional high-yield businesses. With the right support, they can provide the quality products and services necessary to address difficult societal problems. Impact Square worked with the Ministry of Employment and Labour to attract investment for social enterprises.

Meanwhile, Work Together Foundation has reported that 486 project participants have increased access to external finance through networks and other sources after attending the training. Their ‘IR event’ provided access to investment and funding opportunities for those who displayed their social enterprises. “It is most appropriate to support the entire process of acceleration, investment, and growth,” says Wontai Lee, Secretary General of Work Together Foundation. “Work Together Foundation also works on programmes with big companies and government agencies that support the initial incubation, acceleration and financing. Recently, we had success in bringing in a service from a social enterprise into a big conglomerate, which is an example of our model of coexistence in access to finance.”

5. Leveraging Technology for Wider Reach and Reducing Barriers 

Technology remains a significant tool in providing entrepreneurship education and support to social entrepreneurs. It allows for wider reach across borders and barriers, guarantees improved accessibility to entrepreneurship content and enables self-paced learning while ensuring the right learning outcomes.

Impact Square delivered an AI (Artificial Intelligence) driven solution for social entrepreneurs where entrepreneurship education and content were delivered through the Impact Circle online platform. Entrepreneurs were able to use the platform’s AI chatbot to ask specific questions and receive tailored responses that they could apply directly to their business. There are already more than 3,500 social entrepreneurs using Impact Circle and they have significantly scaled their reach and impact using technology.

It is important to note that leveraging technology presents its own challenges, as evaluating, incorporating and scaling new technology requires significant time. Both Work Together Foundation and Impact Square encountered difficulties related to the design and development of new digital platforms, including extended development times.

Minsu Kim provided reflection on the challenge of incorporating AI into Impact Circle. “We were not able to apply AI technology to the platform initially because to utilize AI, a sufficient amount of data is required. Our focus while applying AI to the platform was to collect data using the platform so that, with the collected data, we could utilise AI to provide quality answers to the users. As time goes by, the answers, information, and data collected will allow us to provide better-quality AI-generated answers. This was our main focus of the design.”

It is therefore important to properly scope the technical requirement for new digital services, plan for it and leave sufficient time for development and testing.

CONCLUSION 

Social enterprises have the potential to scale and become one of the top global sectors in size and turnover with the right support from governments, the private sector, policymakers, ESOs, and funders. The results and learnings from the COVID-19 Recovery Programme in South Korea have further highlighted the gaps we need to fill to catalyse social enterprises as well as the impact that can be achieved by doing so.

The programme delivered remarkable results including:

• 1,384 social ventures and SMEs adapting and improving their businesses
• 755 social enterprises improving their financial resilience
• 1,897 of the businesses supported either creating or maintaining jobs
• 920 of the businesses supported are still operational

The programme has not only delivered value to the programme participants but has also validated the need for such targeted support and interventions for social enterprises.

The supported businesses demonstrated an increase in knowledge, grit, and confidence to run their businesses and reported an increase in financial health and status. By applying these key learnings many more social enterprises in other settings can be impacted positively with this kind of intervention if scaled.