Social entrepreneurship is the work of social entrepreneurs. A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture). While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital. Thus, the main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further social and environmental goals. Social entrepreneurs are most commonly associated with the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors,[1] but this need not preclude making a profit. Social entrepreneurship practised with a world view or international context is called international social entrepreneurship.[2] See also Corporate Social Entrepreneurship.
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The terms social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship were used first in the literature on social change in the 1960s and 1970s.[3] The terms came into widespread use in the 1980s and 1990s, promoted by Bill Drayton the founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public,[4] and others such as Charles Leadbeater.[5] From the 1950s to the 1990s Michael Young was a leading promoter of social enterprise and in the 1980s was described by Professor Daniel Bell at Harvard as 'the world's most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises' because of his role in creating more than sixty new organizations worldwide, including a series of Schools for Social Entrepreneurs in the UK. Another British social entrepreneur is Lord Mawson OBE. Andrew Mawson was given a peerage in 2007 because of his pioneering regeneration work. This includes the creation of the renowned Bromley by Bow Centre in East London. He has recorded these experiences in his book "The Social Entrepreneur: Making Communities Work" [6] and currently runs Andrew Mawson Partnerships to help promote his regeneration work.[7]. The National Center for Social Entrepreneurs was founded in 1985 by Judson Bemis[8] and Robert M. Price[9], and Jerr Boschee served as its president and CEO from 1991 to 1999.
Although the terms are relatively new, social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship can be found throughout history. A list of a few historically noteworthy people whose work exemplifies classic "social entrepreneurship" might include Florence Nightingale (founder of the first nursing school and developer of modern nursing practices), Robert Owen (founder of the cooperative movement), and Vinoba Bhave (founder of India's Land Gift Movement). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some of the most successful social entrepreneurs successfully straddled the civic, governmental, and business worlds - promoting ideas that were taken up by mainstream public services in welfare, schools, and health care.
One well-known contemporary social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus, founder and manager of Grameen Bank and its growing family of social venture businesses, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.[10] The work of Yunus and Grameen echoes a theme among modern day social entrepreneurs that emphasizes the enormous synergies and benefits when business principles are unified with social ventures.[11] In some countries - including Bangladesh and to a lesser extent, the USA - social entrepreneurs have filled the spaces left by a relatively small state. In other countries - particularly in Europe and South America - they have tended to work more closely with public organizations at both the national and local level.
In India, a social entrepreneur can be a person, who is the founder, co-founder or a chief functionary (may be president, secretary, treasurer, chief executive officer (CEO), or chairman) of a social enterprise, which primarily is a NGO, which raises funds through some services (often fund raising events and community activities) and occasionally products. Rippan Kapur of Child Rights and You and Jyotindra Nath of Youth United, are such examples of social entrepreneurs, who are the founders of the respective organizations. Jay Vikas Sutaria of Bhookh.com is a social entrepreneur who is leveraging the power of the Internet to fight hunger in India. Upendra Agrawal and Jitendra Agrawal of click2plant.com are social entrepreneurs who are leveraging the power of the Internet to plant a tree online with the support of each and every individual click.
Today, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations, foundations, governments, and individuals also play the role to promote, fund, and advise social entrepreneurs around the planet.[12] A growing number of colleges and universities are establishing programs focused on educating and training social entrepreneurs.[13] Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH recently established a partnership between the entrepreneurship department and Village Markets of Africa, allowing students hands-on experience with an organization working directly with producers.[14]
In the UK in 2002 seven leading nonprofit organisations established UnLtd - The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs. It holds a £100 million endowment especially to invest in social entrepreneurs in the UK. UnLtd provides individuals with cash awards and practical support that includes coaching, training, and networking opportunities to help develop community projects. UnLtd Ventures is the in-house consultancy division of UnLtd and focuses on a number of outstanding social entrepreneurs, providing them with business support and helping them to scale up or replicate their organisations or get investment ready. Another of their operations, UnLtd Research, is becoming the world's primary source of evidence and thinking around social entrepreneurship. Its central purpose is to lead the global business, public policy, and academic debates about the role of social entrepreneurship in community regeneration, employment, and growth strategies.
The George Foundation's Women's Empowerment program empowers women by providing education, cooperative farming, vocational training, savings planning, and business development. In 2006 the cooperative farming program, Baldev Farms, was the second largest banana grower in South India with 250 acres (1.0 km2) under cultivation.[15] Profits from the farm are used for improving the economic status of the workers and for running the other charitable activities of the foundation.[15]
Some have created for-profit and for-a-difference organizations. A recent example is Vikram Akula, the McKinsey alumnus who started a microlending venture, SKS Microfinance, in villages of Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Although this venture is for profit, it has initiated a sharp social change amongst poor women from villages. A great example is the activity of Brent Freeman [1], Norma LaRosa [2], and Nick Reder [3] the co-founders of Roozt.com [4] a new e-commerce site in the United States that connects online shoppers with socially responsible, social entrepreneur vendors through a daily deal format. Each customer's purchase also donates to a monthly cause. This online shopping site aims to empower everyday online shoppers to make a difference in the world through everyday purchases and is committed to providing double bottom line value with every sale.
There are continuing arguments over precisely who counts as a social entrepreneur. Some have advocated restricting the term to founders of organizations that primarily rely on earned income – meaning income earned directly from paying consumers. Others have extended this to include contracted work for public authorities, while still others include grants and donations. This argument is unlikely to be resolved soon. Peter Drucker, for example, once wrote that there was nothing so entrepreneurial as creating a new university: yet in most developed countries the majority of university funding comes from the state.
Organizations such as Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, the Skoll Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Athgo, Root Cause, the Canadian Social Entrepreneurship Foundation, NESsT, New Profit Inc., National Social Entrepreneurship Forum, and Echoing Green among others, focus on highlighting these hidden change-makers who are scattered throughout the world. Ashoka's Changemakers "open sourcing social solutions" initiative Changemakers uses an online platform for what it calls collaborative competitions to build communities of practice around pressing issues.
The North American organizations tend to have a strongly individualistic stance focused on a handful of exceptional leaders, while others in Asia and Europe emphasize more how social entrepreneurs work within teams, networks, and movements for change. The Skoll Foundation, created by eBay's first president, Jeff Skoll, makes capacity-building "mezzanine level" grants to social entrepreneurial organizations that already have reached a certain level of impact, connects them through the annual Skoll World Forum and Social Edge, the Foundation's online community, and highlights their work through partnerships with the Sundance Institute, Frontline World, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and other film and broadcast outlets. Skoll also supports the field of social entrepreneurship, including through Skoll's founding of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the Said Business School at Oxford University. Examples of social entrepreneurial business in the USA include NIKA Water Company, which sells bottled water in the USA and uses 100% of its profits to bring clean water to those in the developing world, as well as Newman's Own which donates 100% of its profits to support various educational charities.
Youth social entrepreneurship is an increasingly common approach to engaging youth voice in solving social problems. Youth organizations and programs promote these efforts through a variety of incentives to young people.[16] One such program is Young Social Pioneers, which invests in the power and promise of Australia's young leaders. The program, which is an initiative of The Foundation for Young Australians, strengthens, supports and celebrates the role of young people in creating positive change in their communities. About Face International [5] has a program that promotes youth social entrepreneurship amongst middle school, high school, and college students by providing interest-free loans, grants, and mentorship. They also help middle schools, high schools, and colleges form youth social entrepreneurship after-school clubs on site. Roozt's [6] business model parallels such an approach by "paying it forward" with their commitment to help educate today's youth about the fundamentals of socially responsible businesses so that they may become progressive leaders of tomorrow. National Social Entrepreneurship Forum, founded by Yashveer Singh[17] is support organisation for promoting social entrepreneurship amongst Indian Universities and youth.
Istanbul Bilgi Üniversity launched the BİLGİ Young Social Entrepreneur Awards project in May 2010 to identify, educate, and provide financial support for young social entrepreneurs in Turkey. Cooperating with International Youth Foundation, Sylvan/Laureate Foundation and TEGV, through this comprehensive strategy, İstanbul Bilgi University seeks to contribute to the development of a new generation of socially conscious citizens leading change in their communities.
Another youth social entrepreneurship organization is rooted in Turkey, the organization named SOGLA [7] (The Academy of Young Social Entrepreneurs). SOGLA provides young entrepreneur candidates (named SOGLA pioneers) with a high quality of education,and supports pioneers to develop, start-up, and sustain their social entrepreneurship projects.
Fast Company Magazine annually publishes a list of the twenty-five best social entrepreneurs, which the magazine defines as organizations "using the disciplines of the corporate world to tackle daunting social problems."[18] In 2009, BusinessWeek followed suit, publishing a review of America's twenty-five most promising social entrepreneurs, defined as "enterprising individuals who apply business practices to solving societal problems."[19]
The internet and social networking websites have been pivotal resources for the success and collaboration of many Social Entrepreneurs. These media allow ideas to be heard by broader audiences, help networks and investors to develop globally, and achieve their goals with little or no start-up capital. For example, starting with no capital and just an interesting idea, three Australian students (1egg1world) are in the process of raising AUS$1million for Charity starting out with just one egg, an excellent example of the growing opportunities brought by the internet to people with good ideas.[20] The US-based nonprofit Zidisha leverages the recent spread of internet and mobile technologies in developing technologies to provide an eBay-style microlending platform where disadvantaged individuals in developing countries can interact directly with individual "peer-to-peer" lenders worldwide, sourcing small business loans at lower cost than has ever before been possible in most developing countries.[21]