What is Me to We?

Craig and Marc Kielburger founded Me to We, a new social enterprise, to support the registered charity Free The Children and to help individuals make everyday decisions that create a more just, humane and sustainable world.

Me to We is a family of for-profit businesses that offers a range of goods and services, including:

  • Sweatshop-free clothes
  • Socially conscious books and music
  • Environmentally-friendly products
  • Inspiring speakers
  • Exciting leadership training
  • Life-changing travel experiences

Guided by a legal framework, Me to We donates 50% of its after-tax profits to its charitable partner, Free The Children. In the last year alone, Me to We provided $1 million to Free The Children in donations and in-kind services. The financial help from Me to We is allowing Free The Children to lower it's already low administrative costs so that, within five years, every penny raised for Free The Children will go directly to its projects.


Part of Me to We's mission is to help individuals change their lifestyle so they can make socially conscious and environmentally sustainable choices that reflect their values. Last year, Me to We:

  • Saved 66,320 gallons of water by printing Me to We book on post-consumer waste recycled paper
  • Planted 80,000 trees to ensure environmental sustainability through Me to We's Buy a Tee, Plant a Tree program
  • Saved 20,460 pounds of pesticides by using only organic cotton in Me to We clothing
  • Inspired 145,885 people by Me to We speakers
  • Visited 194,430 students in 416 schools through Me to We school tours
  • Gave Me to We leadership workshops to 160,000 young people across North America


What is a Social Enterprise?

A social enterprise is a business with a social mission. Unlike a registered charity, a social enterprise is established to earn money while achieving a social goal. Using business models, a social enterprise usually provides products or services. Profits from the business may be designated to support a charity partner, redirected back into growing the business or both. The focus of the business has a social purpose – protecting the environment, curing an orphan disease, giving persons with disabilities meaningful work or ending child poverty through education.

A social enterprise can do what most registered charities cant: offer goods and services for sale, advocate for policies and practices, provide leadership training, or conduct international trips. Because a social enterprise is not a registered charity, it can't give tax receipts. A social enterprise may support a registered charity, but it is a distinct and separate organization with its own structure, governance and financial records.

There are many examples of successful social enterprises: Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize for establishing the Grameen Bank, a social enterprise that has provided over $5 billion in micro-financing. Victoria Hale's Institute for OneWorld Health is a pharmaceutical social enterprise that develops safe, effective, and affordable new medicines for people with infectious diseases in the developing world. It has already developed a drug to cure deadly Black Fever in India.



Me to We as a Model for Social Enterprises

Because social enterprises are relatively new, Me to We has taken great care to make sure that it has exemplary governance and financial operations.

Me to We is a family of for-profit businesses that offers a range of goods and services, including:

  • Me to We and Free The Children have its own separate board, directors, staff, accounting and auditing
  • Ne to We's financial statements are evaluated every year by outside experts
  • A legal framework governs the relationship between Me to We and Free The Children, which was developed by Torys LLP
  • Me to We and Free The Children asked a retired Canadian Supreme Court justice to independently review the organizations and the relationship between them, the role of its founders and governance model. Both organizations were issued an unqualified laudatory report

Me to We's operation as a model social enterprise has been recognized with the 2008 Ernst & Young Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the 2007 Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs Award.



Social Enterprises and Me to We

Founded by Craig and Marc Kielburger, Me to We is an innovative new organization — a social enterprise — dedicated to making a more just and humane world.

There are different kinds of organizations that contribute to changing our world. Many are registered non-profit charities, such as Free The Children — also founded by Craig and Marc — the world's largest network of children helping children through education.

Charities depend on individual and corporate donations and grants from foundations and governments. Charities can also provide tax receipts for most donations. They operate under strict rules about what they can and cannot do. Charities generally can't derive a large portion of their budget through the sale of products, provide advocacy or empowerment programs or offer services like international trips.

Some organizations have adopted an exciting new model called social enterprise that is neither registered charity nor traditional business.