An imperative for many investors today is to do good as they do well. Socially conscious investment is fueling many sectors of the economy, from alternative energy to continuum of care communities by combining the best of the head and the heart. Savvy investors provide their business acumen and management expertise to help these industries prosper.

Investing in autism services offers a tremendous opportunity to earn a significant return on investment, both financially and socially. There is a global need for autism services that is growing rapidly and has the potential to transform people’s lives. Socially conscious investors will find an industry that is not well-understood or capitalized and is ripe for new, more collaborative business approaches.

I believe that autism services are ripe for behavioral healthcare companies that have a heart for helping and the entrepreneurial spirit that drives business innovation.

The autism services sector needs more of these investors and the clients of these services would benefit from improved business practices in the field. More investment will create more trained professionals and increase the number of service providers. More providers will be able to help more individuals and better prepare more schools to work with children with autism.

The Need for Standardized Outcomes
A critical need in autism services is for standardization in measurement across the industry. Currently, data collection and analysis is random and inconsistent, and outcomes are starting to be defined by insurance companies rather than by clinicians. This is a dangerous path that does not bode well for clients of autism services.

If instead, new investors brought additional resources and their sophisticated business minds to the sector, they could professionalize its business practices. Almost certainly this would include development of standardized outcome measurements across the industry. In this way, greater capital investment can change the entire landscape for individuals living with autism and their families.

Profit and Care Can Live in Harmony
There are those who believe that the rush for profits is incompatible with compassionate patient care. In practice, there are certainly those organizations that have lost sight of the delicate balance in a greedy headlong rush. But the reverse is a problem too: any company that fails to apply the best business practices will either cease to exist or limp along providing second rate services to their clients.

The free marketplace is an adept Darwinist, dispatching those outfits that fail to keep up with business innovations and punishing those that provide poor customer service.

Enlightened self-interest is another driver of wise investment in autism services. The autism diagnosis has exploded in the last couple of decades – one in 59 children born today is diagnosed along the spectrum – and the cost to society to support an autistic individual across their lifetime is somewhere in the vicinity of $2-3 million. A 2014 study found the total cost of autism in the U.S. alone is roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars. This burden is borne by each of us.

As a consultant to private equity firms and companies in the behavioral healthcare marketplace, I am a firm believer in financial and social ROI. Good business can improve the quality of people’s lives and strong results are good for business. It’s why I’ve committed my company, Empowering Synergy to that exact mission.