Transcript of Keynote Address by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the President’s Challenge Social Enterprise Award Ceremony

Mr Cheang Wai Keat, Chairperson, PCSEA Evaluating Committee 2023 and members of the Committee,

Ms Theresa Sim, Chairperson, Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise, raiSE, and fellow board members,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

I must say that meeting the finalists a short while earlier and watching the video made me feel ‘raised,’ as I’m sure all of us did. This is such an inspiring group of entrepreneurs and people with the heart and serious ideas, and they're working so hard at it. Thank you for all you are doing to grow this space of doing business for the social good.

raiSE was started eight years ago. It has really grown. Many of you are focused on hiring people with disadvantage or disability - often in traditional businesses, but with a very serious focus on inclusive hiring. Others are focused on products and services aimed at supporting those with a disadvantage or disability. Or supporting those with less seen needs like the caregivers of persons with disability, just like Becky Eng, founder of Nanny Pro, shared in the video.

It’s a whole range, different ways, but we should celebrate the emotion and ideas behind all your initiatives.

Some of you started young. We heard from Adam Huh Dam and Chong Ing Kai, who started when they were students. They made simple and affordable robotic kits that can be introduced in our schools, and in the developing countries around us too.

So, the social enterprise space is growing, and it’s very encouraging. But it still faces a host of challenges. That’s a sobering reality. It’s difficult to get funding at the start, difficult to win over customers, and difficult to scale up. This isn’t a surprise. It’s generally true for startups, but it’s especially true for startup social enterprises.

And that’s why raiSE exists. It has become a venture builder, supporting social enterprises through its VentureForGood Grant. raiSE has funded around 200 social enterprises, particularly at early-stage. It is also helping in capability development. And hoping that the enterprises go on to be able to raise funds from the market, or family offices and philanthropies.

But it’s more than social enterprises alone that we’re trying to grow. We’re trying to develop a broader culture within our business ecosystem, which enables profit and purpose to go hand in hand. You have shown that it can go hand in hand, and we need that culture to grow and be owned across the business sector.

It has to be mainstreamed. So that social and environmental responsibility become integral to how we run businesses. Integral to what investors look for in enterprises - whether they serve the social or environmental good. And integral to how all stakeholders, including consumers, all of us, exercise discretion in our decisions.

That’s our larger, collective purpose agenda. We each have our missions. Businesses have a mission of making profits to be sustainable. Social service agencies have a mission of achieving different social outcomes. Community bodies look to strengthen bonds. But there is an intersection between the missions, and we must particularly develop that intersection for the business sector.

And what does it look like in practice? Businesses dealing with their suppliers ethically and fairly, particularly where suppliers are smaller or younger companies.  Second, it has to do with your staff and employees. Developing their capabilities so they can progress in their careers. Treating and paying the lowest paid employees well. And making a serious effort to hire differently-abled members of our community, as well as those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and who may not have gone very far in education. All these aspects of inclusive hiring require attention.

We’ve got to plough that intersection so you can still make profits and be sustainable as a business. And the good news is that it’s possible; there are role models amongst you. And among some other large enterprises in the business world. They’re taking the lead; some investors are also taking the lead in looking out for businesses that make a social or an environmental impact, and wanting to allocate funds to them and share risk and reward differently.

So we’ve got to grow the number of businesses and investors ploughing that intersection between sustaining profits and sustaining the social good and the environment. We’re off to a good start, but there’s still a long way to go.

We must do more collectively. What will it take? More businesses recognising that they’re less likely to do well in the long term if they don’t shortchange our collective future.

More shareholders recognising that serving the social and environmental good is not a cost centre; it can be a value creator.

And it takes consumers, all of us - this is a potentially powerful force, particularly for the younger generation that will now be earning its own income and deciding on what they should spend on, a very powerful force of consumers. Being discerning. Not just buying the brand but supporting businesses that are taking the lead in serving the social and economic good.

So, it’s about businesses themselves, it’s about the investors, and it’s about us as consumers. So that’s the larger collective purpose agenda.

Those of you here are at the frontline and leading the way. We must broaden this culture across the spectrum of businesses and in the community. Try different experiments, initiatives, different ways of spreading this culture of raising each other.

Let me conclude by thanking the evaluation committee, who have put great effort, as I mentioned, into assessing each of the applications. We honour the winners. But we also call out all of you, for embarking on something different and inspiring. It’s really to all of you gathered here that we recognise and to celebrate.

Thank you very much.