Engage by Role

Businesses

The opportunities for business to help create a vital Fourth Sector include:

• Doing business with Fourth Sector organizations.
• Investing in Fourth Sector enterprises.
• Providing reduced-fee or in-kind services to Fourth Sector organizations.
• Procuring goods and services from Fourth Sector providers.
• Advocating for better policy vis-å-vis Fourth Sector activity.
• Finally, social-purpose ventures and socially and environmentally conscious businesses might consider adopting For-Benefit attributes as a way to advance along the sustainability continuum.

A thriving Fourth Sector can deliver benefits:

• Provide technical assistance, access to capital, and preferred status in some markets.
• Deliver employees who are conversant with triple bottom-line management and operations.
• Remove regulatory barriers.
• Provide tax incentives and other favorable treatment from government agencies.
• Provide validation in the sense of legitimizing them in the eyes of a public that has come to be skeptical about the mission and motive of conventional for-profits.
• Deliver visibility as part of the larger Fourth Sector movement.