News, Events & Comments

Some green shoots start in the dark but too much darkness will eventually kill the plant.  
The recent sale of pioneering Kitchener, Ontario carshare Community Carshare to bigger brother Communauto of Montreal, through its palatably titled Virtucar of Ottawa raises a question about the evolution of contemporary social enterprise. Like worker co-op Drum Travel, who sold out to Bay Street corporation New Wave Travel in the 1990's, Community Carshare's evolution represents a basic dilemma for innovative enterprise, be it socially purposed or not. If successful, they have to grow to stay viable, at least commercially, in evolving economies. If not, they just disappear. Are enterprising start-ups doomed to disappear into the maw of larger, less idealistic, even if not un-idealistic, businesses? After twenty years of blood, sweat and, probably, tears, by the original marginally recompensed activists who created it, the former People's Car that became Community Carshare and had in recent years expanded from 2 cities to 10, has now dropped its non-profit co-operative structure and become a regular for-profit business, though still plying its carshare trade in a fast expanding sector (now including major capitalist firms like Enterprise) of the kind pilloried by Peter Dauvergne in books like "Environmentalism of the Rich." The challenge, one answered by many co-operatives, over time, is staying true to core values rather rather than following market-based indicators.It can be done, but expanding too fast, as did Community Carshare, I would argue, as a former board member, though understandable in volatile times, is not the route to take, even if the metaphor seems appropriate in this case.       

The business of many sustainability promoting firms is really business, argues Dauvergne, not sustainability, however much they may want to suggest the opposite. The question for pioneering social enterprises which have had a genuinely huge impact on current culture and lifestyles is this:must selling for scale and greater impact require selling out? Unless there are deeper values at work, be they political, moral or in some cases, even religious, probably.