Khalid Kamil On Empowering The Civil Society For A Sustainable Social Impact

Khalid Kamil is the founder and managing director of Philandure, a Social Impact Catalyser, that empower creative and impactfull talents and partner across sectors to amplify sustainable social impacts.

Khalid is an innovative and visionary strategist with experiences in legal, strategic planning, philanthropy, fundraising and financial sustainability, project management, and organization development. His journey as a social business strategist is influenced and aligned by elements of philanthropy, responsibility and sustainability. He held a Project Management Development Professional (PMD Pro) Certification accredited by APMG International, United Kingdom and was certified as the PMD Pro Certified Coach for Asia Pacific. He advocates for a more responsible social and development sustainability in every activity or point of interest by the change maker. His expertise has benefited more than 50 organizations: social businesses and enterprises, civil society organizations from Malaysia, United Kingdom, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania, Kenya, Indonesia, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Dubai, Kuwait, Egypt and Qatar.

Khalid discusses HOW NETWORKS OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS CAN MOST EFFECTIVELY CATALYSE CHANGE AND WHAT PROGRESS IS OCCURRING IN THE MALAYSIAN ENTERPRISE AND INNOVATION SECTOR.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - Could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in branding?

[Khalid Kamil] - I'm the managing director of Philandure Group, and we are social business. My first milestone was when my father always brought me to the old folk’s home to serve them and provide food. Later on, when I graduated from a law school, I joined the judiciary for a while. Then I left the judiciary and started as a legal practitioner. There was a turning point where I started to serve my volunteering work to a certain group of people. I saw that these vulnerable communities didn't have much opportunity to explore the actual world, that they had been caught between the four walls they were having. Therefore, I started to write proposals.

In 2015, I wrote one proposal to a philanthropist foundation based in Jeddah, a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I wrote a proposal about revolving fund for education. That was my turning point and how I got involved in the world of philanthropy. The proposal was accepted and then I was engaged with them to be the project manager. I travelled from one country to others to deliver microfinance for education. When I went and met the partners in around seven or eight countries, I found that from year one until the project was being implemented, the civil organisation that managed the fund seemed to be dependent on the project. The first year we gave them 1 million euro, and the second year we gave them 1.2 million. The numbers kept increasing, and there was no planning for financial sustainability, rather than to provide the microfinance or education learned to the vulnerable communities. That is how I started in philanthropy, I gathered my companion, and I told them to let us do something.

We needed to empower the civil system organisation. We needed to create a good environment for them, to develop their organisation, but at the same time to sustain the financial part of the organisation. That is how I started this work.

As the Managing Director of Philandure, can you tell us about this enterprise and its social purpose?

Philandure is a social impact advisory firm. What we do is we provide advisory and consultation for social impact. We also provide talent development programs for social impact. At the same time, we have a division that provide shop services like accounting, legal, compliance, governance, and auditing.

Where most civil organisations are not able to engage experienced people, we provide those services to enable them to make proper accounting, legal documentation, and governance structures for their organisations. That is Philandure, we train and develop the civil society organisation from the inside, outside, and also connect them with potential donors.

How can social businesses catalyse change in society, and what differentiates them from charities or not for profit organisations?

The first thing we really take as a main difference in this sector is we need to understand that in social business, the main philosophy should be making impact for the community and bringing impact to society. That should be the main driver of social businesses. What makes us different to charities or non-for-profit organisations is that they might be looking at making social impact via funding. For non-for-profit organisations, they might be looking at social impact from how to implement the project or initiative at a grassroot level.

The difference between us is that we are catalysing the change by creating social impact with a different method, where we empower the society, look into how the community could contribute towards a particular change and how could they sustain their initiative for a long-term period of time.

We should look into how this social impact could be sustainable, so it is not only a social impact, but it's more towards how they can sustain their initiative and bring a sustainable impact to the community.

Where do social enterprises have an edge over entrepreneurs who are taking the ‘business as usual’ approach?

I believe that every entrepreneur would like to make profit and create solutions for the public and challenges they are facing. As a social business or social enterprise, we are looking at how we can provide a solution for a certain community or society. That particular solution should contribute to a social change, and when we talk about the social change, it means we should provide a massive or very strategic move, because it requires a lot of financial investment. It will require holistic involvement by stakeholders. Creating a social business is not merely profit making. Yes, profit should be one of the main elements of the business, but how we make impact and create social change for that community is crucial and the most significant difference between normal business and the social business model.

What development has occurred in the Malaysian social impact sector and where are opportunities emerging?

I feel the environment in the Malaysian social impact sector is a bit up and down. Back in 2018, there was an initiative to establish a chamber of social enterprise development. We saw a lot of social innovation projects became social enterprises and later on, founders put money towards these social enterprises and made them social business for their charity arms.

I could see there was a moment where, at a certain time, the landscape of social enterprise began to be set aside by the mainstream, just because they didn’t understand what a social business is.

Then, the government changed and assigned the social business supervision from one ministry to another ministry. I can see the current situation is developing, and a lot of social innovation projects are being accepted by social enterprise accreditation entities. I saw very recently there were few organisations (who were start-ups of social businesses) go to the next phase of their business where they're growing their business, not only in Malaysia, but also expanding towards other countries. I would say this ecosystem seems to be still developing but is well facilitated by the government. I believe as a social business, we should not only think about how the government or how corporates are supporting us, but how we create opportunities and how they could bring challenges or catalyse bigger change in the community at large.

We don't really depend on the assistance from the government and the sponsorship from corporate, but we really hold our social business canvas so we can explore everything. I believe that good social business will be getting support, not only from the community, but will also be highlighted and supported by the government and private sector. I believe this sector is developing well in Malaysia, and I'm looking forward for the future where the social business could play on the same league together with others in the business sector.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?

Recently, we were working on a global social crowdfunding platform, a marketplace, and also engaging volunteers for social businesses. This project we [originally] named Khayr Well, and Khayr in Arabic means good deeds. This initiative is now named ActioNow, and is inspired with success stories.

we train them starting from how they can do crowdfunding, and then later on we don't make them depend on the donation or the funds from the crowdfunding platform, but we train them to sell their product online.

Once they sell the product online, they started to collect more people to support them. Everybody who buys their products on the platform become the supporter of the social business. I can see how this particular organisation, coming from a very small initiative in Malaysia, are selling their services, not products. The product is an online product, but they sell the services and provide a solution for civil society sector organisations and resolve the challenges that this sector is facing.

I can see how they morph their fund and how they started to develop themselves as a social business and sell their product online. They are providing services, creative services for the third sector. The third sector doesn't have much funds for expensive projects, like developing applications or managing social media. How they do this is they put the opportunity on their platform and then they look for e-volunteers from all over the world. These e-volunteers are begging to work for this initiative, and they provide the fees for these e-volunteers. The e-volunteers on another site need to prove they are from vulnerable communities or unemployed people. This is actually how they provide for them from donations, they link to a social initiative, innovation and provide the solution or the good job opportunity for the unemployed people and the vulnerable committee. This is inspiring as much as catalysing change, this changemaker is bringing a more sustainable impact for communities.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I believe I need to share one of the most significant books that changed my mindset towards this sector. The book is by Muhammad Yunus. I believe he started a well-known social business that inspired people to create social initiatives. The book’s title is A World of Three Zeros. It discusses a new economy with zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero net carbon emissions. This is the book that changed my life. I read it back in 2017, and it changed me a lot.