Social entrepreneurship

Step 4: Your Offer

What value can you add?

From completing the customer empathy map, the next step is to ask yourself what value you add in the lives of the people you help. What problem are you solving with your product or service? And are they, or other beneficiaries, willing to pay for this solution?

Back to our example of the empowerment training in Nigeria:
What customers or beneficiaries would be willing to pay for this training and de products that are produced?

In this case the value proposition is divided in a group of beneficiaries (the girls themselves) and a group of paying customers. A paying customer could be: a local government with a strong focus on gender issues, or a buyer of the products.  Very often beneficiaries and paying customers are two different target groups, and they also ask for a different approach when it comes to communication and marketing.  

Sometimes you have to work with a mixed revenue model: partly funding, and partly paid customers. Or ask a big group of potential customers for a very small amount of money.

• In what way they differ and are the same?
• What value are you adding in their lives? (or: what problem are you solving?)