social-enterprise
(9)
Goodwill Industries International
Goodwill Industries International is the umbrella organization for a North American network of about 150 autonomous, community-based Goodwill nonprofits. Founded in Boston in 1902 by Methodist minister Edgar J. Helms, it runs the classic model of collecting donated clothing and household goods, reselling them through thrift stores and, increasingly, online, and using the proceeds to fund free job training, career services, and support programs. The parent body sets brand standards, coordinates national partnerships, and runs shared initiatives such as the online marketplace GoodwillFinds and the Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator, while local members deliver services on the ground.
Goodwill Industries of South Florida
Goodwill Industries of South Florida is a Miami-based nonprofit social enterprise that funds training, employment and job placement for people with disabilities and other barriers to work. Founded in 1959, it runs a self-sustaining business model spanning donated-goods retail and thrift stores, technically complex apparel and flag manufacturing for the U.S. military, commercial laundry, janitorial services and third-party logistics. With roughly 3,600 employees and about $196M in annual revenue, it is one of the largest Goodwills in North America and the largest employer of people with disabilities in Florida.
Firebrand Artisan Breads
Firebrand Artisan Breads is an Oakland-founded, Alameda-based wood-fired bakery that describes itself as a jobs program that happens to sell bread. Founded in 2008 by Matt Kreutz, it wholesales artisan breads and pastries to hundreds of Bay Area retailers - including Whole Foods - and runs a direct retail cafe. Its defining feature is an Open Hiring model that prioritizes people with high barriers to employment (formerly incarcerated, formerly homeless), paired with a perpetual purpose trust that locks the mission in permanently and shares profits with workers.
Red Rabbit
Red Rabbit is the largest Black-owned K-12 school food management company in the United States. Founded in 2005 by former Wall Street trader and MIT graduate Rhys Powell, the company runs full-service cafeteria programs that cook made-from-scratch, culturally relevant meals for students in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania - treating good, diverse food for children as an act of social justice.
The Aruna Project
The Aruna Project is a Cincinnati-based nonprofit athleisure brand that creates lifelong freedom for survivors of sex trafficking through employment supported by holistic care. Founded in 2014 by Ryan and April Berg after time spent in Mumbai's red-light districts, Aruna employs survivor artisans in India and the US to craft premium bags, totes, and hair accessories - with 100% of sales revenue reinvested into freeing, employing, and empowering women. Its 'Freedom Business' model reports an 86% sustained freedom rate versus a 23% industry standard, and its national Aruna Run 5K series mobilizes thousands of runners to 'Run for Her Freedom.'
Everytable
Everytable is a Los Angeles-based, mission-driven food company that makes fresh, nutritious meals affordable and accessible to everyone. Built around a central commissary kitchen and small-footprint stores, subscriptions, delivery and refrigerated SmartFridges, the company prices meals by neighborhood - keeping food affordable in communities often treated as food deserts. Founded in 2016 by former Wall Street trader Sam Polk and ex-private-equity executive David Foster, Everytable is a public benefit corporation pioneering a Social Equity Franchise Program to build generational wealth for entrepreneurs of color.
Maternova, Inc.
Maternova is a woman-owned, woman-run social enterprise based in Providence, Rhode Island that curates, evaluates, and distributes evidence-based medical devices and diagnostics for maternal, neonatal, and reproductive health in low- and middle-income countries. Founded in 2009 as the first e-commerce marketplace for global health technologies, it connects inventors and manufacturers who lack distribution with the governments, NGOs, hospitals, and clinicians who need life-saving tools - aggregating small orders to unlock manufacturing runs and accelerate access to innovations that prevent maternal and infant deaths.
wikiHow
wikiHow is a collaborative, wiki-based platform on a mission to teach anyone how to do anything. Founded by Jack Herrick in 2005 and run as a self-funded 'hybrid' company that pairs a profit-making ad model with a nonprofit-style public mission, it hosts hundreds of thousands of community-written, expert-reviewed how-to articles in 19 languages and has reached tens of millions of monthly readers worldwide.
Sama
Sama is a San Francisco-based AI training-data company that combines a 5,000-plus full-time annotation workforce - most based in Kenya, Uganda and India - with proprietary tooling to deliver labeled data, model evaluation and red-teaming for the world's largest AI builders. Founded as the nonprofit Samasource in 2008 by the late Leila Janah, it relaunched as a for-profit B Corp in 2019 and counts Google, Walmart, NVIDIA, Ford and Microsoft among its customers.