ReSET (Social Enterprise Trust)

The beginning…
Social Enterprise Trust is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization started by Kate Emery, to help transition her company into a Social Enterprise. There were many changes that needed to be made, some of them easy, but some very difficult – like dismantling the traditional sales commission structure and replacing it with a salaried approach. Some changes were straightforward and bold – like determining that all distributed profits would be split equally between the community, employees and the investors, and some were more subtle and difficult to pin down, like the commitment to transparency and participative governance. But over the course of several years Walker transformed itself, and emerged as a Social Enterprise as part of its DNA.

The final step was to protect this hard-earned state, and to do that Kate issued a new class of preferred stock, to be held by The Social Enterprise Trust. While providing no control over day-to-day operations, this preferred stock gives The Trust a majority voice in any issues related to the Social Enterprise status of the firm. This legal structure protects the legacy of her company’s Social Enterprise status and is designed to prevent any future majority shareholder from undoing this structure.

Today…
Our mission is to advance the social enterprise sector. While there will always be a place for the traditional approach to business, we believe that there will be an increasing demand for socially conscious businesses, and we want to help demonstrate that this model is not only much more deeply satisfying to work for, it is ultimately more sustainable and often even more profitable than the more traditional approach.

Through various educational programs we hope to steer young people toward Social Enterprise as well as to help existing business owners transition to the Social Enterprise model.
We are also eager to help any company whose philosophy and vision already embraces the Social Enterprise model to protect this legacy into the future.

Tomorrow…
Someday we hope to see Social Enterprise become a more mainstream, traditional business model. We hope to see more business schools offering degree programs in Social Enterprise rather than offering a single course in Business Ethics.