Mpopi Khupe is the Managing Director and co-founder of Zevoli Growth Partners. She has led the organisation’s evolution from a for-profit ESD advisory firm to a social enterprise — a transition rooted in a deeper reckoning with purpose, impact, and what it truly means to bridge the gap between corporates and small businesses.
There are decisions in the life of an organisation that are logical, and there are decisions that are true. Our transition from a pure for-profit company to a social enterprise was both. It was informed by analysis, yes — but it was ultimately driven by something more fundamental: the recognition that what we had always been doing could no longer be adequately described by the language of profit alone. This is the story of that transition and what it means for the work we do and the communities we serve.
The Crossroads
We found ourselves at a crossroads, struggling to communicate the true essence of our work to a global audience. While our commitment to MSME capacity building in South Africa remained absolute, our message appeared to convey a purely local focus, creating a disconnect with the universal objectives of supplier diversity, sustainability, and global impact.
The world around us had evolved. The lines between local and global objectives were blurring. The alignment between South Africa’s B-BBEE Codes of Good Practice and global supplier diversity and sustainability principles had become increasingly pronounced. The “S” in ESG — Environmental, Social, and Governance — was gaining momentum as a framework for measuring the kind of social impact we had always been pursuing. We realised that for Zevoli to genuinely fulfil its purpose on a broader scale, we needed to align not just with local legislation, but with international principles of supplier diversity, sustainability, the SDGs, and ESG.
A Journey of Self-Reflection
This shift forced us to look within, both as a company and as its leadership. We realised that while our core mission had always been to empower SMEs and stimulate the local economies in which they operate, we were not effectively communicating our true purpose. We were doing the work of a social enterprise, but we were framing it in the language of a for-profit company.
The journey involved an intimate understanding of the distinction between a pure for-profit entity and a social enterprise and recognising that we were, and had always been, the latter. That recognition allowed us to take genuine pride in who we are and to articulate our “why” with far greater clarity and conviction.
“We were doing the work of a social enterprise but framing it in the language of a for-profit company. The transition was not a change of direction — it was a change of description.”
What It Means to Be a Social Enterprise
A social enterprise solves social problems through business methods. It does not choose between profit and purpose, it channels profit toward purpose, ensuring that commercial sustainability and social impact are not in tension, but mutually reinforcing.
For Zevoli, being a social enterprise means focusing on the interactions between corporates and the communities they operate in, with particular emphasis on small businesses. Our objective is to bridge gaps, create opportunities, and improve standards of living by making supplier diversity business as usual, both locally and globally.
We have deliberately chosen the social enterprise model over an NGO structure because we believe in the power of earned revenue to drive lasting social impact. While non-profits also aim to create positive change, a social enterprise combines profit-making with social mission. We are in business to generate revenue and we channel that revenue toward creating social benefit and financial sustainability. This model gives our impact longevity that charitable funding alone cannot provide.
Defining Our Theory of Change
Our journey toward becoming a social enterprise began with defining our Theory of Change, the ultimate vision of social impact we are working toward and the ideas on how to make it happen. That theory is built around three interconnected outcomes: growing entrepreneurial individuals, building local economies, and creating resilient communities.
From that foundation, we developed a purpose statement that is both aspirational and measurable: “We aim to bridge the gaps between corporates and SMEs to improve the standards of living through providing access to opportunities in our quest to contribute to a world where supplier diversity is business as usual.”
This statement is not a tagline. It is an operating principle, one that shapes how we design programmes, select partners, measure success, and make decisions at every level of the organisation.
The Challenges of the Transition
Transitioning to a social enterprise brought its own set of challenges. Crystallising our “why” was a major victory, but measuring impact accurately proved to be a complex, layered process. The intricacies of social entrepreneurship, and the subjective dimensions of development data, presented real methodological hurdles that required careful thinking and honest iteration.
We are still evolving in this respect. Measuring the change in a rural entrepreneur’s confidence, or the ripple effect of a single procurement opportunity on a household, is harder than measuring revenue. But it is not impossible and it is not optional. The rigour we apply to impact measurement is one of the things that distinguishes a genuine social enterprise from one that simply uses the language of purpose to dress up business as usual.
What Has Changed and What Has Not
Our true north remains unchanged: to empower SMEs and contribute to local economies. What has changed is how we communicate this impact, how we measure it, and how we hold ourselves accountable to it. Our KPIs have shifted. Our approach to impact reporting has deepened. The emphasis of our “why” has sharpened.
Most importantly, the transition has given every member of our team a clearer sense of the meaning of the work they do. We are not just an advisory firm executing ESD programmes. We are a social enterprise that uses business as a vehicle for creating the kind of change that South Africa and the broader African continent, needs. That distinction matters. It changes the way we show up.
We are not just a for-profit company. We are a force for positive change and that changes everything about how we work.
About Zevoli Growth Partners
Zevoli Growth Partners is a pioneering social enterprise and ESD advisory firm founded in 2014. Wholly owned by black women, the organisation develops and implements Enterprise and Supplier Development programmes for MSMEs, with a particular focus on rural, township, and peri-urban businesses. Zevoli’s mission is to bridge the gap between corporates and SMEs, contributing to a world where supplier diversity is business as usual.
