Knowledge Items
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 […]
Scaling Social Impact: Strategies for Spreading Social Innovations
By J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson This presentation provides guidance for addressing the challenge of “scaling out” – spreading social sector innovations into new geographic locations in order to achieve greater impact. In addition to offering a four-stage strategic decision making process, this document provides guidance on what and how to scale out, […]
For-Profit Social Ventures
By J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson Traditional sector boundaries are breaking down as societies search for moreinnovative, cost-effective, and sustainable ways to solve social problems and provide socially important goods, such as education and health care. One result has been a rise in the number of social entrepreneurs who want to combine a […]
Strategic Tools for Social Entrepreneurs: Enhancing the Performance of Your Enterprising Nonprofit
By J. Gregory Dees, Jed Emerson and Peter Economy A complete set of tools for applying entrepreneurial strategies and techniques to your nonprofit As a follow-up to their book Enterprising Nonprofits, the authors of Strategic Tools for Social Entrepreneurs provide a full set of practical tools for putting the lessons of business entrepreneurship to work […]
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 […]
Pathways to Social Impact: Strategies for Scaling Out Successful Social Innovations
By J. Gregory Dees, Beth Battle Anderson and Jane Wei-Skillern Includes a matrix of options for how to scale social impact. More comprehensive treatment of article above. The authors encourage social entrepreneurs to consider different ways of both defining and spreading their innovations before determining whether and how to proceed. Presents a framework for evaluating […]
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 […]