Kick4change scores for sports-CSR

The soul of a triple bottom enterprise is selling a product that is both functional and easily repurposed for social change. Adopting a Tom's Shoes model, the UK's Kick4change sells soccer equipment in the UK, supports local sports organizations and supplies gear to soccer camps in Africa. Awesome.

Social enterprise + charity  = community interest company

Kick4change is a "Community Interest Company" (CIC) a business entity found in the UK that is specially tailored for social enterprises, much like what B-Corp is working to organize in the U.S. The CIC format blends qualities of nonprofit (political restraint and assets devoted to the public interest) with those typically associated with a for profit company (limited liability, cannot be charitable). So, CIC's turn a profit, but their profits are specifically designated as a community asset.

Kick4change's exciting programs

Kick4change is remniscient of candy sales of the past, but with soccer gear as the new candy. It partners with primarily grassroots soccer organizations (think your local youth soccer league) to sell kids cleats, and the organizations that it works with can earn half the profits back. Then Kick4change puts the rest of the profits into local orgs.It also provides  cleats to soccer programs in Africa through Pledgemyseat, a snappy promotion in which Kick4change takes virtual pledges for each seat in the 2010 World Cup Stadium, and send a pair of cleats to soccer camps for African youth with each seat pledge. They've sent a total of 2,000 cleats so far, and hope to quadruple that number by the time the World Cup rolls around. On top of that, you can enter Kick4change's contest to design the cleats it gives away. User generated design is always especially cool.

Kick4change is engaging in collaborations with other sports based charities such as The Sports Trust (located in South Africa), 'Kick4Life' (located in Lesotho) and Tackle Africa (which is pan African). FIFA, the international soccer association that runs the World Cup, is another group with obvious sports-based CSR potential. FIFA works with streetfootballworld (an economic development project that works through soccer) through Football for Hope. It sounds like people are beginning to appreciate sports as a delivery vehicle for social change initiatives.

Soccer: an important CSR tool

While Kick4change is a small but growing organization primarily in the UK, it shows that sports based CSR programs offer an important, underrated opportunity for CSR. CSR programs around sports are silver bullets; they build community, generate profit, keep kids off streets, easily attract participants and don't offend anyone. Like love or math, sport --- particularly soccer--- is a universal language that can be  effectively be paired with community building activities. While there are an array of soccer based nonprofits, Kick4change is an example of a company that combines the power of soccer with the power of business, for high impact results.

Thanks to former Justmeans writer David Connor of Coethica for this tip via his great twitterfeed.