There is a parable that tells the story of a man who found a diamond the size of his fist. He didn’t want to sell it, pawn it or have it kept away. He didn’t want to take it to a gem cutter for the pieces to be used for jewelry or for industry. Instead, he kept it in his garden, buried under a tree. He did nothing with it, apart from digging it up to check if it was there, and buried it back again. This went on for a year, until finally thieves spied upon his curious habit and stole the diamond from him.

One of the toughest challenges we have with money is how to make it grow after we’ve worked so hard to save it away. What do we do with money, after all, when we’ve set it aside in the first place? Like the man and the diamond, we can’t just sit on our money knowing full well that the value of a dollar changes and fluctuates as time passes. To truly make our wealth worth something, we need to put it into something truly worthwhile, ideally into something that helps more than just ourselves, but the greater community as well.

Old conventional wisdom used to be that the good way to work around a lot of cash available was to invest this fund into something with an eye to helping it grow. It used to be best to save money in a bank, or in a proper hedge fund, but the chaos that has infiltrated financial markets has shattered hope of doing so with personal gain in mind. It got worse as jobs started drying up and companies started closing shop as well, and nobody considered trying to enter the competition because of fear of losing what little was left.

It is precisely in times of difficulty, with crises swirling around people, that the spirit of Social Entrepreneurship started to take root. The idea itself is not at all new – it had been part of the greater American consciousness decades ago, but it is in today’s special milieu that we see people talk more about it, share more about it. Around the world, people have decided to use wealth and equity to finance profit-making businesses that through their operations helps provide a genuine service to the community. Examples are Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank that lends money to small-time business owners so they can seed their money for small interest rates. There is Rags2Riches, a firm in Manila, Philippines that manufactures high-end fashion accessories using rags, while taking time to train and tap the skill and ingenuity of impoverished women.

All it takes is a good idea. American Richard Ludlow’s Academic Earth website, for example, is about using the Internet to open access to better education worldwide, while receiving profits from ad sales. Rachel Sterne of New York pulled together some savings to start Ground Report, a worldwide news network that has made dramatic findings thanks to reports from people on the ground, and is also projected to take in an estimated $225,000 in profits for 2009.

It’s been proven possible to do good work and make money at the same time. Give it a shot!