The social entrepreneurship problem: Sustaining impact versus sustaining organisations
Creating a lasting impact is a core goal of social entrepreneurship. However, as they grow social entrepreneurs often shift their focus to sustaining their organisations, sometimes at the expense of their original mission. In our recent study, Social Entrepreneurs as Ecosystem Catalysts: The Dynamics of Forming and Withdrawing from a Self-Sustaining Ecosystem, we challenge the traditional view that organisational permanence and growth are always desirable. Instead, we propose a new model of ‘ecosystem catalysis’, where social entrepreneurs can create and then withdraw from the ecosystems that they have created without compromising their original purpose – in other words as catalysts they make themselves redundant, ensuring the ecosystem functions effectively even after they withdraw.
The case study: ColaLife in Zambia
The study's insights are drawn from a single case study of ColaLife, a non-profit organisation aimed at addressing the lack of access to diarrhoea treatment in Zambia. Diarrhoea is a preventable and treatable condition, yet it remains a leading cause of child mortality due to a lack of accessible treatments.
ColaLife's founders, British social entrepreneurs Simon and Jane Berry, observed that while Coca-Cola products reached even the most remote areas, essential medicines did not. They leveraged Coca-Cola's distribution network to deliver "Kit Yamoyo" (meaning "Kit of Life"), a specially designed diarrhoea treatment kit containing oral rehydration salts and zinc, the gold-standard treatment recommended by the World Health Organization. The kits were designed to fit into the empty spaces of Coca-Cola crates, ensuring they could be distributed to hard-to-reach areas.

Over several years, ColaLife connected Zambian organisations to form a complete ecosystem for producing and distributing Kit Yamoyo. This included the pharmaceutical company Pharmanova to manufacture the kits, existing distribution networks of wholesalers and retailers to get them to remote areas, and local health clinics and community health workers to dispense them.
You cannot build a value chain for a product or service based on what you think people need. You have to start with something that you know they want.
Making the eco-system self-sustaining
To make the ecosystem self-sustaining, ColaLife focused on:
- Empowering local actors: They transferred knowledge and responsibilities to local organisations and businesses, such as the Keepers Zambia Foundation (KZF), which trained and monitored retailers.
- Market-based approach: By ensuring the kits were affordable and profitable for local retailers, ColaLife created an economic incentive for continued distribution and availability.
- Monitoring and adaptation: They continuously monitored the ecosystem's performance and adapted their strategies based on feedback from local stakeholders.
Making themselves redundant
While working to build up the ecosystem, ColaLife simultaneously worked to make itself dispensable. They kept their organisation small and resisted pressure from funders to grow. They made themselves ‘invisible’ locally, promoting the Kit Yamoyo brand rather than ColaLife. The results have been dramatic - from 2012 to 2018, diarrhoea-related deaths in Zambia declined 28%, compared to 20% in other Sub-Saharan African countries during the same period. ColaLife consistently communicated to partners that they would eventually exit and in 2018 when they determined the ecosystem was self-sustaining, they did exactly that. As of 2022, Kit Yamoyo was still locally produced and widely distributed through public and private channels.

Impact and implications for social entrepreneurs
ColaLife not only successfully reduced diarrhoeal deaths in Zambia, they also created a sustainable model for social impact which in turn has broader implications for social entrepreneurship:
- Decouple impact from growth: it demonstrates that lasting social impact does not necessarily require the perpetual growth of the initiating organisation.
- Empower local solutions: Social entrepreneurs can create more resilient and contextually appropriate solutions by empowering local stakeholders.
- The role of foreign organisations: Empowering local solutions also avoids creating dependency on foreign organisations.
- Rethink success metrics: Traditional success metrics, such as organisational growth and permanence, should be re-evaluated in favour of metrics that reflect sustained social impact and ecosystem health.
Conclusion
As the world grapples with urgent social and environmental challenges, new models for creating impact are sorely needed. Social entrepreneurs can create more lasting and far-reaching positive change by focusing on cultivating local ecosystems rather than building their organisations. While ColaLife's model may not be appropriate in all circumstances it does offer a promising alternative to the ‘grow or die’ mentality often applied to social enterprises; and it deserves serious consideration by practitioners and funders seeking to maximise long-term social impact.

It's like if there's a flood, water will go where it goes, and you can build a dam, or you can dig a riverbed, but it will go where it goes, and you are actually far better off observing where it goes, and then trying to arrange to go and work with it.
Background
This article is based on the research paper Social Entrepreneurs as Ecosystem Catalysts: The Dynamics of Forming and Withdrawing from a Self-Sustaining Ecosystem published in the Journal of Management Studies in February 2024.
It was authored by Paulo Savaget, Associate Professor at the Engineering Science Department and Saïd Business School, Pinar Ozcan, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Saïd Business School and Tyrone Pitsis, Professor of Strategic Projects at University of York.
All images in this article are used by kind permission from Simon Berry of ColaLife.
