‘Are we drifting away from our core mission?’ - that was the burning question within Fusion management as they were preoccupied with Social enterprising.

Business aspect of Fusion social enterprise has been a major focus for more than a year, as economic sustainability has been recognized as fundamental to Fusions achievement of longer term mission. As a result Fusion completes 2008 / 2009 budget year with a healthy cash flow, contributed over 45% by the social enterprise revenue.

Nevertheless, such positive outcomes were at a price. For instance, Fusion’s village information centre (VIC) program could not produce healthy results. Though over 100 VICs continue to sustain on their own, they could not result in new thrust. Are we drifting from the core mission - ‘Mission Drift’?

The question lead to a research carried out by a research team from Ross Business School of University of Michigan. The study involved a document based analysis carried out by 5 research students (including Postgraduates) under the guidance of Prof. Michael Gordon over 3 months (during October to December, 2008).

The recommendations of the final report included:

a). to establish micro-mission statements for target group categories

b). for Fusion to strive to establish Performance based budgeting practice

c). introduce SROI (Social Return of Investment) as an impact monitoring mechanism.

Following link provide access to detail report>

By 2009 May, Fusion had managed to adopt Performance based budgeting, as a new model for their new budget. Micro-mission statements are being formulated. However, Fusion still contemplates over SROI.

For more details visit the Mission drift blog.

We consider telecentre as the ‘Nucleus of Fusion’.

Why? telecentre connects the technology with the community.

(telecentres > the small units having few computers and other ICT equipment located in rural outskirts. They provide internet access, ICT education and other IT services to rural poor).

Fusion works with our own network of telecentres (Sarvodaya- telecentres) as well as the telecentres (eg Nanasala) set up by other state, private and NGO institutions.

Our Goal:

Support achieving Telecentre sustainability

Strategy:

• Build the capacity of telecentre operators
• Develop products and services to be delivered at telecentres
• Advocacy and promotion of telecentres

Projects:

1. Telecentre Family Project (TCF) - coordinates all the telecentres (belongs to sarvodaya and other partners) in Sri Lanka. Primarily aims to build the capacity of telecentre operators and build a national network of telecenters who can share strengths. Also aims to facilitate telecentre sustainability.

2. Sarvodaya IT Unit (SITU) - coordinates primarily on Sarvodaya telecentres located in Sarvodaya districts. These telecentres are mainly focused to serve Village Information Centers and Sarvodaya’s country wide community development work.

Economic sustainability is a cornerstone of Fusion.

Fusion is a non-profit making social enterprise. We aim to generate substantial incomes by strategically employing double bottom line strategies.

Double bottom line - implies meeting Social objectives, while seeking Economic targets for its institutional sustenance. (In the next phase we may aim to set triple bottom lines incorporating Environmental targets).

As a social enterprise, we strive to keep the community aspirations first. In the same time, we would employ sharp entrepreneurial strategies to derive substantial financial incomes.

Goal:

Building Fusion as a sustainable Social purpose enterprise

Strategy:

1. Manage VIC’s as ‘Zero Cost’ social purpose operations
2. Build sound economic strategies to ensure telecentre sustainability.

• Design marketable product and services to support revenue generations at telecentres
• Design and implement business models for win-win economic partnerships with telecentre networks

‘Zero Cost’ Social operation (VIC):

VICs are by design, community driven libraries, that are owned & managed by Village community. The resources are generated by community themselves. And mostly, the financial needs for the maintenance and upgrading of VICs are derived (or benefited) from the village savings of Sarvodaya’s Economic program (SEEDS, www.seeds.lk) through own community initives.(For instance, Village Shramadana Society take the leadership for fund raising to buy computers to upgrade their VICs).

Telecentre sustainability:

• Recognizing the telecentre operation model>

Different models are being tested, since early 2007, with the aim of recognizing a economically sound, replicable telecentre operation model. Accordingly, 10 telecentres (of the Sarvodaya telecentre outfit) has been converted into fee based, target driven, revenue centric operations.

During 2007/2008 budget period, they collectively had generated revenues to cover 32% of the operational expenses. To generate revenue, they had deployed four services; ICT Courses, IT Services, IT Training and Location hire. (Telecentre number has been dropped from 10 to 6 by July 2008, after performance assesments).

• Marketable services for telecentres > we have designed 9 types of Standard ICT Courses as a marketable service to be offered at Telecentres as a value added service. These services will be offered through Nanasala and telecentres as a revenue generation model to support their sustainability.

(read more> ‘telecentre family offers ICT courses’

Avoid the ‘mission drift’:

We take every effort to avoid ‘mission drift’ by careful planning our enterprise engagements. Thus avoid ‘drifting away from social mission, whilst engaging with enterprise activities’. How do we do that?

1. Systematic planing processes
2. Maintain our passion to serve the poor (i.e. compassion in action).

At business planning, we managed to ensure the core empowerment services (eg. VIC development, setting up of telecentres, capacity building of telecentre operators, basic ICT awareness) are offered free of charge.

Enterprising services are designed to the already established markets, (eg , ICT Courses, Photocopying and Printing, Phone call services). People (regardless of economic status) pay for these services in the existing market. (Recent studies show 41% of the Bottom of the Pyramid Communities already own a phone, in Sri Lanka). Such services are offered at an affordable price (mostly cheaper rates than existing market), thus making revenues while ensuring the financial & social benefits to the communities.

Social Return:

We have estimated that Fusion Social enterprise saved 1.2million Rs (12000$US) to the rural communities, during its first 9 months of operation (March - Dec 2007).

NESsT (www.nesst.org) (Non-profit Enterprise and Self Sustainability Team) of Chile, provided expert support services (under the sponsorship of telecentre.org) to develop the Social enterprise skills of Fusion.

Fusion welcomes private sector investors and social entrepreneurs to partner with our efforts to scale up the social enterprise engagement.

ICT technologies are changing very fast. Fusion depends on Research & Development to keep- up the pace.

‘Research’ - implies applied research, & ‘Development’ - towards improvement of technologies and services to make Fusion delivery efficient and effective.

We aim to infuse mainstream technology developments on the one hand, and also aims to contribute to the technology developments, by working as a sounding board of community needs, wisdom and voices, on the other.

Goal:

Update Fusion ICT4D approaches to fit into most modern context

Strategy:

• Carry out applied research within the context of fusion programs
• Partner with academic and research institutions

Projects:

• Completed the project titled Virtual Villages - Socio-anthropological and technological studies on Last Mile. The project carried out from 2005 - 2007, in collaboration with 4 partner institutions, UCSC (University of Colomobo, School of Computing), CENWOR (Centre for Womens Research), University of Peradeniya and D.Net (Bangladesh).

Products:

• Our research findings of 3 year long engagements are published in the Fusion publication - ‘Noise at the Last Mile’ (read >> pdf).
• Other Research papers related to Fusion:
  • A Study of ICT & Rural Development of Sri Lanka - Kamal Kapadia, PhD Candidate, University of California, Birkley (read >> Paper)
  • NGO and Community Participation in Setting Up Nanasala for Targeting the Poor and Vulnerable and Improving Government Accountability - Harsha Liyanage, Regional Develop Dialogue, UNCRD (UN Centre for Regional Development), Vol 27-2, 2006 (read >>> paper)

On going:

1. Research on Telecentre sustainability - ‘Sustainability First’ carried out by Dr Harsha Liyanage, MD, Fusion as a visiting fellow to telecentre.org of IDRC. Research has been carried out since January 2007, involving Sri Lanka (Fusion & ICTA), Bangladesh (D.Net & Grameen Phone CIC), India (Drishtee) & Brasil (ATN). ‘Sustainability First’ book publication is due early 2009, capturing research findings. For additional details>  www.sustainabilityfirst.org

2. Research on ‘Mission Drift’ - Are we losing our social mission, in the face of entrepreneurship drive? That is the question, fusion seek answers, as it put more effort into Social Enterprising. A research has been initiated (in Nov 2008) with the collaboration of team of students from Ross Business School, University of Michigan, USA. For details> www.missiondrift.wordpress.org

Forward plans:

Fusion is planning to carry out research programs into the aspects of Mobile Phones and Telecentre hybrid applications towards the empowerment of rural farmers. Expect - ‘Fusion-net’ in 2009.