Skoll Foundation

The Skoll Foundation is a social entrepreneurship foundation based in Silicon Valley, California, with a mission to drive large-scale change by investing in, connecting, and celebrating social entrepreneurs and other innovators dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing problems. It invests in social entrepreneurs through its annual 'Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship' and makes grants to support the ecosystem around social entrepreneurs, including the 'Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship' at Oxford. It connects social entrepreneurs through its online community 'Social Edge', as well as via the annual 'Skoll World Forum' on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford. It celebrates social entrepreneurs through media projects such as its 'Uncommon Heroes' short films; a four-part 'New Heroes' public television documentary (broadcast in 2004); partnerships with other media outlets, including The Sundance Institute, NPR, PBS and Public Radio International; and the Skoll Awards ceremony at the Skoll World Forum each spring. It was founded by Jeff Skoll who was the first employee and first president of eBay and makes grants in excess of $40M per year

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History

The organisation was created in 1999 by Jeff Skoll.

In November 2003, the Skoll Foundation donated £4.4m to the Saïd Business School of Oxford University for the creation of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in order to promote the advancement of social entrepreneurship worldwide. In addition to delivering an innovative teaching programme, the Skoll Centre has developed a portfolio of research which employs theory but that is also valuable to practitioners in the field. The Centre acts as a network hub for social entrepreneurship, linking together key actors in the sector and contributing towards creating new and effective partnerships for sustainable social change. It engages in social innovation and aims to have a decisive influence on policy.

Research at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship

The Skoll Centre’s research ranges across three main topic areas identified by practitioners as of key importance: governance; resources; impact. In each area, a variety of scholarly work is being undertaken. This is disseminated in both applied working paper formats and in peer-reviewed academic books and journals.

International Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

In the last week of May 2007, the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship [1], based at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, and the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship at Zhejiang University in China, jointly organised an International Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. The International Forum on Social Entrepreneurship represents a first step in building ongoing links between Asian and western social entrepreneurship. "This Forum provided a venue for leading academics, policy-makers, and social entrepreneurs in China and other Asian countries to report on their work, share knowledge about best practices, and focus a research agenda,". "This Forum provided a venue for leading academics, policymakers, and social entrepreneurs in China and other Asian countries to report on their work, share knowledge about best practices, and focus a research agenda." Dr Alex Nicholls.

International Conference on Social Entrepreneurship in India

The conference was organised by UnLtd India in conjunction with the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and NMIMS in 2006. The main objective of the conference was to promote and accelerate the development of social entrepreneurship in India. They achieved this by:

Over the course of three days the conference was attended by 85 organisations from India and Europe.

Education at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship

Skoll Scholarships

Each year, the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship awards five full scholarships to individuals working in the field who wish to enter the one-year full-time MBA programme. Each scholarship covers all the fees for the course, as well as providing an allowance for living expenses and travel. Skoll Scholars usually have a strong track record in social entrepreneurship and intend to return to work in this sector after their studies. They take all the social entrepreneurship elements of the MBA, which comprise three eightweek modules and two major social business projects designed to positively impact a specific social problem. This amounts to approximately one-third of the whole MBA course content. To be considered for a Skoll scholarship, candidates need to provide evidence of the personal qualities strongly correlated with social entrepreneurship, such as persistence in pursuit of a social benefit goal; willingness to face failure and start again; a bias towards action rather than reflection; a tendency to explore the environment for opportunities and resources; a willingness to take personal, and sometimes financial, risks; and a habit of developing a network and exploiting its members. In addition, candidates need to demonstrate how a business education can contribute to the wider development or the local community or community of interest they work with in the social entrepreneurship movement.

Award winners

Through mid-2009, the Skoll Foundation had named 59 social entrepreneur organizations from around the world as recipients of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. These are:

  • Friends International
  • Friends of the Mothers
  • Fundacion Gaia Amazonas
  • Fundación Paraguaya[4]
  • Global Footprint Network
  • Gram Vikas
  • Half the Sky Foundation
  • Health Care Without Harm
  • INJAZ al-Arab
  • IDE-India
  • Inst. For Development Studies and Practices (IDSP Pakistan)
  • Institute for One World Health
  • International Bridges to Justice
  • International Center for Transitional Justice
  • Kashf Foundation
  • KickStart
  • Kiva
  • Manchester Bidwell Corporation
  • Marine Stewardship Council
  • Partners in Health
  • Peaceworks Foundation

In addition, Skoll has made ecosystem grants to The Acumen Fund, Ashoka, The Carter Center, Duke University's Center for the Advanced of Social Entrepreneurship, the Santa Clara College's Global Social Business Incubator, and several other organizations supporting social entrepreneurship.

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