Mission

“Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The frustration is that we can’t seem to replicate (those solutions) anywhere else” . Bill Clinton The International Centre for Social Franchising tackles the issue of scale; its mission is to help the most successful social impact projects replicate.

Category

Education and Skills

Additional Information

The essence and power of social franchising is that a proven social change project is turned into a ‘franchise’ and then quickly replicated. At its simplest, social franchising can be equated to the highly successful commercial franchising seen all over the world: Body Shop, Subway or McDonalds. The central franchise documents their processes and then franchisees adopt the approach and are given support in establishing themselves. This allows them to set up a successful business much faster, with reduced risk, whilst maintaining quality. The critical difference with social franchising is that rather than creating profits for shareholders the aim is to create benefits to society. The social franchising model can be successfully applied to the full spectrum of third sector organisations, from social enterprises to NGOs. The power of a social franchise is greatest when a network is established under a common brand. Rapid innovation becomes possible because of the number of semi-independent, highly motivated franchisees tackling the same issues. In some cases the shared brand has given the ability to influence policy far beyond that of an individual organisation.