Franchising for Peace
Social franchising seeks to apply a business structure to make the world better.
By Sheldon Himelfarb and John Pope
In the past five years we have seen an explosion of individuals and groups — “peacetech entrepreneurs” — tackling age-old drivers of conflict ranging from inter-ethnic tension to land disputes to corruption using the ubiquitous technology and data tools available to them. It has become a truism to say that for the first time in human history everyone with a cell phone or Internet connection can send information, ideas and money around the world with the push of a button.
This rapid innovation is not just creating new opportunities for the field but also exposing the need for improvements. On July 8, the PeaceTech Lab and the U.S. Institute of Peace held a high level roundtable discussion in Washington, D.C. to consider ways of working that could better take advantage of these opportunities for peacebuilding: to learn not just how to adopt new technology but to create new innovative structures and institutions ready for its effects. There is still too much violence and suffering in the world to be held back by convention.
Luckily, the past few years have also seen the emergence of new organizational models for social change. Representing these insights, experts in social entrepreneurship, B-corps (companies that agree to abide by certain standards for societal improvement), certification programs, and other models joined the roundtable discussion. The conversation was vigorous and informative, and it offered up many avenues to better organize the field.
Providing Balance
Social franchising, a model explained by a representative of the International Franchise Association, stood out as particularly viable. Franchising models provide a balance between local flexibility and central coordination. This has proven to be a powerful business force creating some of the world’s most recognizable brands. Social franchising seeks to apply that sort of structure to make the world better.
A great example is the work CFWshops has been doing in healthcare in some of the poorest countries in the world. One of the key problems in global health is that medicine is not reliably available. CFWshops has used the franchise model to create a network of healthcare centers like your own corner pharmacy. The economies of scale created by this large network make the goods cheaper increasing access. And the strict standards required to be part of the network assured people were getting quality medicine in a reliable way.
CFWshops’ central organization has remained a non-profit to further keep costs down and increase accessibility. But the local franchisors can run their stores as businesses and use the profit to support themselves and their employees. This gives the project more staying power and has the unintended consequence of becoming a source of economic growth for the community.
The PeaceTech Lab formed in hopes of trying to do peacebuilding differently. First, by harnessing the power of media, technology, and data for peacebuilding; but why should innovation stop there? Social franchising offers a model that can scale that mission quickly, and in the process challenge the entire peacebuilding field to think differently.
Empowering People in Conflict
What would a peacetech social franchise look like? One could easily imagine a peacetech franchise that empowers people in conflict areas through training and mentorship to become peacetech entrepreneurs. The PeaceTech Lab already supports PeaceTech Exchange events that bring together technologists and civil society organizations to locally develop solutions to what they see as the most pressing problems. The lab has done these events in Burma to tackle the problem of dangerous speech, in Iraq to promote open and inclusive government, in India to counter gender violence, and more. And the U.S. Department of State has run similar technology empowerment programs, like Tech Camp, that have upskilled peacebuilders around the world.
Local franchises that could run these events more regularly would have the benefit of a more permanent footprint. They could create more long-term collaborations and innovation with greater impact. Fostering these new ties would help strengthen the entire community. And the technical training and convening power they provide could be valuable business. In many conflict countries much of the population is just coming online and local governments, businesses, and civil society organizations will pay for the training needed to have the skills to reach them.
Another peacetech franchise could be specifically focused on data gathering and analytics for peacebuilding. Data has great value for peacebuilding as new analytics, social media, and other big data tools give us a window onto the complex human dynamics of conflict. This kind of data work has already helped countering election violence in places such as Afghanistan and Kenya. However, ongoing local data collection and analytics in-country would further reduce the rate which conflict countries return to violence, which today is dishearteningly at nearly 40 percent.
At the same time collecting local data has often been a source of revenue in conflict countries where this information is scarce. As foreign direct investment in fragile economies increases, so too has the demand for this information increased from businesses and governments. Social franchises could be the key in ensuring data collection serves both corporate and community interests.
A Powerful Model
The entire peacebuilding field could find social franchising to be a powerful model. Similar to other fields that have adopted a franchise model, peacebuilding is work with a global scope that requires intensive local presence: global support for community leaders and organizations mediating disputes, strengthening the community, and standing up to violence and extremism.
Unsurprisingly, and for many different reasons, the communities affected by violence are the often the least likely to have the support to do this. Peacebuilding as a field seeks to end the violence, address the underlying roots of the problem, and rebuild the communities to better handle conflict in the future.
This work has generally been done by two types of institutions: large grant-making institutions - government funders or foundations with endowments - and many smaller in-country organizations that implement the projects. Ideally this allows the large institutions to foster best practices and local groups to be responsive to the unique dynamics of the communities they work in.
Unfortunately, the tensions between international funders and local implementers inherent in this system have created some key problems. Local groups are often not self-sustaining and are left chasing after the funding cycles of the larger grant makers who find themselves buffeted from crisis to crisis.
While certainly new crises need to be addressed as they arise, peacebuilding takes time. Far too many projects lose funding to the next crisis in the next country just as the evaluation data was showing that they were starting to make a difference. History has shown that when the work of the last crisis is left unfinished then even countries that are starting to improve are more likely to return to conflict.
Social franchising might provide just the needed amount of local ownership and staying power, coupled with a global strategic view, that peacebuilding needs. The field should view it as just as exciting an innovation as mobile phones and big data. Finding the right way to use it means that one day we could boast not just “millions of burgers served” but “millions of lives saved.”
Sheldon Himelfarb is president and CEO of PeaceTech Lab and John Pope is special assistant to the president. Contact Himelfarb by email at [email protected] and Pope at [email protected].