On May 6, 2007, the Return On Inspiration office celebrated the long-awaited arrival of the article. The New York Times piece was one we didn’t write, nor were we even interviewed for the story. In fact, we didn’t even know it was coming. But when it arrived, we knew that we had too.

For the past sixteen years, the Return On Inspiration core team has been living in a space that the article “Businesses Try to Make Money and Save the World” refers to as the “fourth sector.” We just didn’t know it until now.

“The result is a small but budding practice — what some label the fourth sector — composed of organizations driven by both social purpose and financial promise that fall somewhere between traditional companies and charities. The term “fourth sector” derives from the fact that participants are creating hybrid organizations distinct from those operating in the government, business and nonprofit sectors. But because the types of participants vary widely and much of the activity is nascent, no single name for what is occurring has gained broad use.”

The fourth sector is home to few but visited by many, particularly in recent times. As Polly LaBarre recently wrote in Fast Company (June 2007), “Somewhere between the Oscar for Al Gore’s planetary-disaster epic, An Inconvenient Truth, and the canonization of Angelina Jolie by the United Nations (in association with People magazine), the message started sinking in: The cultural conversation around the environment, social change and human rights is approaching maximum velocity. What is arguably urgent has become inarguably hip.”

For those who pioneered the social enterprise field, bringing in organizations like Share Our Strength, Teach For America, Echoing Green and City Year, as well as businesses such as Ben & Jerry’s, Tom’s Toothpaste and Chipotle (yes, you heard us right), their sweat equity is beginning to pay off. This new ROI is coming in many forms that range from an influx of capital seeking good, double bottom line investments to magazines like Fast Company and others who have positioned social entrepreneurs as the better looking, more nimble and innovative avatars of their traditionally for-profit counterparts. Most importantly, the return is arriving in the form of unprecedented social change and impact—the true bottom line, buck-stops-here measurement for those of us looking to leave this world a little better than how we found it.