Governments are well acquainted with their role as both enablers and regulators of the private and nonprofit sectors. This involves enactment of legislation that shapes the behavior of private businesses and philanthropic and charitable organizations, and the provision of the financial and capacity support that are needed for their innovation, growth, and long-term development.

Academia’s contribution to the proper and timely scaling of the fourth sector is enormous, as the entire intellectual infrastructure for the sector needs to be assimilated, built and disseminated.

Multilaterals and international organizations are in a unique position to support the development of the fourth sector due to their regional and global knowledge, as well as their work with a myriad of stakeholders to stand up for policies and actions that drive prosperity for all and benefit the planet.

A significant portion of philanthropic resources are spent addressing issues that are downstream consequences of unsustainable business practices. Ironically, all philanthropic resources originate as byproducts of business activity, making the relationship between business and philanthropy a vicious cycle.

For-profit businesses have significant influence over the behavior of markets and can therefore play an enormous role in raising awareness, setting standards, directing demand, and driving innovation. Business leaders can pave the way to a 21st century economic system by helping legitimize and mainstream for-benefit enterprise.

Citizens can push for governments to support the develop of the necessary supportive ecosystem elements for the fourth sector to thrive (like access to aligned capital, education and training, and accounting and metrics).

At their core, nonprofits are purpose-driven entities with social and environmental gains as their main goal. Thus, they can become validating partners to uphold the integrity of the fourth sector in ensuring for-benefits continuously put purpose before profit. 

Through its allocation of capital and oversight or stewardship of investees, the financial sector plays a key role in shaping the development and behavior of private enterprises. If finance and investment markets are unable to support socially beneficial enterprises due to the dominance of short-term profit-seeking and failure to properly account for or prioritize social and environmental impacts, then the whole economy is distorted and unbalanced.

Although for-benefit organizations have become increasingly important to creating prosperity in communities around the world, there is still a great deal of misunderstanding about what for-benefit organizations do and there is an absence of accessible global data on the sector.

Entrepreneurs are the drivers of growth for the fourth sector. They are problem solvers by nature, open to taking risks, discovering, and innovating. There are tens of millions of socially driven entrepreneurs starting new purpose-driven enterprises around the world each year.