Social Entrepreneurship
Scaling Social Impact: Strategies for Spreading Social Innovations
By J. Gregory Dees, Beth Battle Anderson and Jane Wei-Skillern How can social entrepreneurs effectively scale their impact to reach the many people and communities that could benefit from their innovations? As policy expert and author Lisbeth Schorr observed: “We have learned to create the small exceptions that can change the lives of hundreds. But […]
Putting Nonprofit Business Ventures in Perspective
By J. Gregory Dees In the lead chapter in a “how-to” manual for social enterprise produced by the Yale-Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures, Greg Dees lays out cautionary words about the challenges, costs, and risks associated with nonprofit business ventures and provides careful guidance on writing and implementing a business plan for a […]
Sector Bending: Blurring the Lines between Nonprofit and For-Profit
By J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson Traditional sector boundaries are increasingly breaking down. On small and large scales, for-profits and nonprofits are moving into new territories and exploring uncharted waters. While this kind of sector-bending is not entirely new–remember Goodwill Industries or Girl Scouts Cookies–it is certainly growing in popularity. Increasingly we are […]
Sector-Bending: Blurring Lines Between Nonprofit and For-Profit
By J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson This article focuses on the potential benefits of sector-bending. Sector-bending refers to a wide variety of approaches, activities and relationships that are blurring the distinctions between nonprofit and for-profit organizations, either because they are behaving more similarly, operating in the same realms or both. Some of the […]
Social Entrepreneurship is About Innovation and Impact, Not Income
By J. Gregory Dees Despite efforts to spread an innovation-based definition, far too many people still think of social entrepreneurship in terms of nonprofits generating earned income. This is a dangerously narrow view. It shifts attention away from the ultimate goal of any self-respecting social entrepreneur, namely social impact, and focuses it on one particular […]
The Process of Social Entrepreneurship: Creating Opportunities Worthy of Serious Pursuit (Arabic translation)
All acts of entrepreneurship start with the vision of an attractive opportunity. For social entrepreneurs, an “attractive” opportunity is one that has sufficient potential for positive social impact to justify the investment of time, energy, and money required to pursue it seriously. Our model breaks the opportunity creation process into two major steps. First, a […]
The Process of Social Entrepreneurship: Creating Opportunities Worthy of Serious Pursuit
By Ayse Guclu, J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson All acts of entrepreneurship start with the vision of an attractive opportunity. For social entrepreneurs, an “attractive” opportunity is one that has sufficient potential for positive social impact to justify the investment of time, energy, and money required to pursue it seriously. Our model breaks […]
Futures for Kids
By Ayse Guclu, J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson Geoff Cramer and Bill Ziefle’s plan to establish Futures For Kids (F4K), a nonprofit organization designed to provide high school kids with resources for exploring their post-high school educational, training and career opportunities, had seemed destined to succeed. But after a year, success no longer […]
The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship describes a set of behaviors that are exceptional. These behaviors should be encouraged and rewarded in those who have the capabilities and temperaments for this kind of work. We could use many more of them. Should everyone aspire to be a social entrepreneur? No. Not every social sector leader is well suited to […]
Enterprising Nonprofits: A Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurs
By J. Gregory Dees, Jed Emerson and Peter Economy A hands-on resource that shows nonprofits how to adopt entrepreneurial behaviors and techniques The rising spirit of social entrepreneurship has created all kinds of new opportunities for nonprofit organizations. But at the same time, many are discovering more than their share of challenges as well. This […]