somos is community backed with 23 investors taking part in our pre-seed fundraising round. they've all bought into a business model that allocates equity ownership for the team, teachers and grassroots community organisations.
have been put aside at the pre-seed funding stage to allot to our five core community partners (represented 0.5% each as at december 2021). these shares give our partners the same financial and voting rights as the founder and investors have.
will be donated to our five core community partners annually (0.2% each). we've chosen a % of gross merchandising value instead of profits so that our users know that every single purchase from day 1 will result in a donation to our partners.
somos is a for-profit social enterprise and our governing documents specifically require us to take our shareholders, employees and other stakeholders into equal consideration when making decisions.
a unique set up comes with questions! here are some common ones but of course if you have more, please feel free to get in touch 😀
we will be announcing our core community partners in h2 2022.
the organisations will be groups specialising in either:
we want our long term future to be aligned with our community. if our project goes well, we want to share that success directly with grassroots organisations doing critical work protecting languages, culture and people.
traditional csr and diversity and inclusion programmes are often very top down. we want to build with (rather than for) the communities we work in. giving our partners shares with the same financial and voting rights as our other investors makes us directly accountable to them.
no. somos is a for-profit social enterprise. unlike regular for-profit companies, somos is obliged under its governing documents to look beyond its shareholders and also consider other key stakeholders (e.g. employees, partners and the wider community) into account when making decisions. one of somos's key objectives is to have a material positive impact on society.
yes! we are particularly keen to work with people/organisations that (i) teach or facilitate the teaching of endangered, minoritised & indigenous languages; (ii) support refugees and migrants in diaspora (e.g. free classes to learn local languages, protecting rights etc); (iii) broaden access to digital education; and (iv) support mental health and wellbeing.
if you are a charity or community organisation interested in working with us/think our platform could help you, please feel free to contact us and we'll be happy to discuss.
check out these resources on our set up at somos 😁
