E019 – Social Impact and Sourcing the Wildhearts Way with Colin Downie

Wildhearts is an award winning social enterprise that's improved the lives of over 225,000 people in over 40 countries. Their innovative approach to generating income (offering business services to corporates) enables them to fund social impact projects around the world. In this episode I discuss how they do this with their Sales and Partnership Director, Colin Downie.

During our conversation we discuss:

- How Wildhearts focussed on both generating income and social impact from the outset.

- The relationship between their business activities and foundation (a great example of the Give-to-Profit model).

- What social sourcing is and how easy it is for businesses to have impact through selecting social suppliers.

- How they develop entrepreneurs and raise funds by engaging schools and businesses with their Mycro Tyco challenges.

- The importance of listening to others' needs and ideas for how you could develop your business enterprise.

About Colin:

Colin Downie is the Sales and Partnerships Director with the WildHearts Group, the largest B2B social enterprise in the UK. The WildHearts Group is dedicated to launching companies that through their activities and profits deliver entrepreneurship education and microfinance globally.

Colin is a founding member of the WildHearts Group, where his extensive experience and skills in entrepreneurialism, sales and business development have helped to build the WildHearts Group from zero customers, into a multi-million pound organisation now delivering social impact across 40 countries.

Colin has been an instrumental in the Wildhearts Group being awarded Super Pioneer status by Deloitte, Babson College’s prestigious Social Innovation Award, the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award and most recently, the CEO of the WildHearts Group becoming EY’s Social Entrepreneur of the year.

Colin's Links:

Website - http://www.wildheartsgroup.com

Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/colindownie/