Knowledge Items

By Paul N. Bloom Scaling means achieving more efficient, effective, and widespread adoption of an innovation–getting a huge bang for the bucks invested. Whether you want to become the next Google or the next Habitat for Humanity, scaling is a key goal–one that presents a complex problem. There isn’t a universal secret sauce for scaling […]

By Paul N. Bloom For a social entrepreneur with an innovative solution, the holy grail is scaling it—that is, taking it to a level where the new approach operates efficiently and effectively to achieve significant mitigation of a social problem. Indeed, many are under real pressure to scale as their supporters, not unlike investors in […]

By Paul N. Bloom Social entrepreneurs are leaders of ventures that employ innovative approaches to address social problems. Their innovations can emerge in the ways the products or services of the venture function; the ways they are distributed and delivered; the advocacy approach of the venture; the ways the venture accumulates and deploys financial, human, […]

By Erin Worsham Greg Dees is often referred to as the “Father of Social Entrepreneurship Education.” Over the past 20 years, he has taught social entrepreneurship courses in some of the United States’ top business schools, including Harvard, Stanford, and now at Duke. As interest in social entrepreneurship skyrockets and more universities engage in social […]

by J. Gregory Dees Social entrepreneurs bring private resources, ingenuity, determination, business skills, and, in some cases, deep local knowledge to the problems that hold societies back. They innovate, test, and refine new approaches. Their successes and failures, once identified, are a source of valuable information about what works and what doesn’t. These social endeavors […]

Creating Financial Markets: Lessons from a Finance Pioneer Ron Cordes, Co-Chairman of Genworth Financial Wealth Management and Founder of ImpactAssets, spoke at Duke University in 2012.

How to Earn a Return While Lifting Communities Out of Poverty In 2012, CASE hosted Lisa Hall, then President and CEO of the Calvert Foundation. Lisa spoke about her work at Calvert Foundation (now Calvert Impact), the largest US-based nonprofit impact investing fund, managing investment products for individual, non-accredited investors. Both a certified CDFI (community […]

2011 Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award presentation to Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO of the Nonprofit Finance Fund Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO ofCASE is proud to announce the winner of our 2011 Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award: Antony Bugg-Levine, a leading figure in the emerging field of global impact investing. Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO of the Nonprofit Finance Fund […]