Turning Your Passion into a Social Enterprise

With more consumers choosing to support companies that have a clear mission, social enterprises are now on the rise. According to research, 56% of U.S. customers don’t want to purchase brands that they perceive to be unethical, and 86% of Millennials believe that the success of a company should be measured with more than just financial performance reviews. In this blog, we explain how you can turn your passion into a successful social enterprise.

Many people are unaware that irrigation accounts for 59% of a home’s water usage and that over half of the water consumed by an irrigation system ends up being wasted. In the United States, inefficient irrigation systems are responsible for 1.5 billion gallons of water being wasted each day. With less than 1% of the Earth’s surface covered in usable freshwater, this issue has major environmental implications.

Conserva Irrigation is dedicated to water conservation and is the first national irrigation company in the United States. As a social enterprise, Conserva intends to revolutionize the way people water the world’s landscape through its proprietary assessment process and The Toro Company’s water-efficient technology. Conserva helps the average homeowner save 33,000 gallons of water per month and between 40 and 60% on their monthly water bill. Conserva recently expanded its enterprise to commercial locations. To help conserve 32 million gallons of water, Conserva will be updating and optimizing outdoor irrigation systems at hundreds of Target stores.

The company was founded by Russ Jundt who was born and raised in the Midwest. “We Minnesotans don’t just like our water – we love our water,” says Jundt. Speaking about his passion, Mr. Jundt had the following to say: “But I had no idea how passionate I was, or how passionate I would become, about water conservation until I started researching the issues. It was an epiphany – a life-changing moment when I first learned how wasteful irrigation systems can be, and more so that a solution could be created.” Rather than attempt to force policy changes, Russ Jundt chose to found and build the first national irrigation company to make a quicker impact on how consumers view water irrigation.

Jundt says that aspiring social entrepreneurs should, “Remember the infamous quote, ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten. Listening to the establishment and subscribing to the status quo will not solve your problem. Be a contrarian, a disruptor, and look at solving the problem from a different vantage point. Go and be the change you wish to see.”

Are you interested in starting your own social enterprise? Call (804) 621-7167 to talk to us about irrigation franchising opportunities