From the Answer Desk: What is Social Entrepreneurship?

A: The term “social entrepreneurship” broadly encompasses ventures of nonprofits, individuals, and for-profit businesses that can yield both financial and social returns. While social entrepreneurship may be a newer addition to our vocabulary, it is not a new concept or endeavor. The Skoll Foundation provides more background on the concept of social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurship may be translated into an earned income venture, such as selling goods or services, that allows a traditional 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to diversify its funding base while providing positive impact in the community. The Free Management Library states that “nonprofits have to recognize that they're businesses, not just causes”. For more information on starting a business venture within your nonprofit organization, visit Fieldstone Alliance's Tools You Can Use newsletter to assess whether you have the capacity and readiness to launch such a venture.

The concept of social enterprise also applies to civic-minded individuals, businesses and other hybrid organizations that engage in for-profit ventures with a strong social bottom line. Social Edge, a program of the Skoll Foundation, is a "global online community where social entrepreneurs and other practitioners of the social benefit sector connect to network, learn, inspire and share resources."

Other web resources that address the concept of social entrepreneurship:

Idealist: What Is Social Entrepreneurship? - Summarizes the concept of social entrepreneurship from a number of different perspectives.

Institute For Social Entrepreneurs - Provides seminars and training for social enterprises around the world.

Fieldstone Alliance: Short- and Long-Term Approaches to Finding New Revenue Sources - Tips and techniques for conducting a feasibility study and market research on your target audience before launching your venture idea.

The Stanford Social Innovation Review - The Stanford Social Innovation Review offers strategies, tools and ideas for nonprofits, foundations and socially responsible businesses.

National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise - Learn here about training, planning, financing and managing nonprofit risk.

Social Venture Network provides information and convenes conferences for charities and businesses interested in operation in a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable way.

Books on the topic of social enterprise include:

• Mission, Inc.: The Practitioners Guide to Social Enterprise
by Kevin Lynch and Julius Walls, Jr.
• Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan
• Social Entrepreneurship: A Modern Approach to Social Value Creation by Arthur C. Brooks
• Venture Forth! The Essential Guide to Starting a Moneymaking Business in Your Nonprofit Organization by Rolfe Larson
• The World We Want: New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change by Peter H. Karoff and Janet Maddox

To locate more resources on this topic, search the Foundation Center's Catalog of Nonprofit Literature; you could start by searching on "Social entrepreneurship" in the subject field.

Have a question? Ask Us!

(This post is from Katie Artzner and Sarah Jo Neubauer, online librarians at the Foundation Center)

Comments

[Noah Pollock]

Nice listing of organizations that support social entrepreneurship! Another one readers should be aware of is the Institute for Global Sustainability at the University of Vermont (http://learn.uvm.edu/igs)

This program - part of the university's College of Continuing Education - organizes a bunch of classes relating to social entrepreneurship. For example, their course in Collaborative Management helps prepare students for the cross sector partnerships that characterize social entrepeneurship. The Institute also offers a program specifically on social entrepreneurship (http://learn.uvm.edu/igs/social_entrepreneurs) which "aims to provide recent graduates, current graduate students, and professionals an opportunity to develop the knowledge and skills required to apply their commitment to social justice and the environment in creative ways."

Most of their programs occur both on campus and online.

[Lars Olson]

Social Venture Network is also hosting the 2009 Innovation Awards this year to honor social entrepreneurs who are changing the way the world does business. More at: www.svn.org/awards. Applications are accepted through June 15.

[Stephen Sherman]

Thanks for the tips on additional resources, Noah and Lars!

[Rob Bruno]

I used this post in a recent chat...thanks!