Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurs use a business model to address a social need.

Social entrepreneurs exist even within traditional organizations. Do you recognize them? Are you one of them?

Social entrepreneurs buck trends, swim upstream, and break through the bounds of ideology and disciplines.

Nonprofit Alternatives - Starting a Nonprofit Is Not the Only Way to Do Good

Social entrepreneurs often look down on the traditional nonprofit as being stodgy and unwilling to change. At the same time, those organizations that have been in the trenches for many years sometimes feel unappreciated and forced into change.

The darling of the "philanthropic capitalism" fan club right now is TOMS Shoes. And for good reasons.

Forces for Good introduces the reader to a new age in the nonprofit sector, an age that smudges the line between public and private, advocacy and program delivery, and that sets large and brave goals.

If Tobey Gordon Dichter is not a social entrepreneur, I don't know who would be. She exhibits the innovative thinking that allowed her to first grasp a societal problem and then to develop a solution.

Ashoka, known for its work in identifying and fostering social entrepreneurs, has an entire program dedicated to helping organizations working on social change achieve sustainability through a broad engagement of their communities beyond the usual seeking of grants and traditional fundraising.

Social Entrepreneurship has been around for a long time...it just didn't have its own name. In the 1980s the term we all use today began to be used to describe a different sort of entrepreneur. Since then the name has struggled for a definition.

Here are the dos and don'ts of starting a business venture as part of a nonprofit.