A Social Entrepreneur


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How to be Social Entrepreneur

Social entrepreneurship is commonly described as having more than one bottom line or as many as three. For example, in addition to financial performance, a firm's environmental and social effects are also measured. To put it simply, for these entrepreneurs, it's not just about the money.

"Most [social entrepreneurs] don't say 'I want to be a social entrepreneur,'"says Bruce Lowry of the Skoll Foundation in Palo Alto, Calif., which invests in social enterprises. In the past, Lowry notes that social entrepreneurship just sort of happened. A doctor or some other nonbusiness person would work in the field, take note of an area that needed improvement and fix it. They were effectively accidental entrepreneurs, says Lowry.

However, as social entrepreneurship grows up, so too does its definition. As the name indicates, a social venture, which can either be for-profit or nonprofit, combines a social purpose with an entrepreneurial activity such as providing a product or service. Greg Dees, a social entrepreneurship professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in Durham, N.C., boils it down to two schools of thought: social innovation and social enterprise.

Social Innovation

These social entrepreneurs are considered to be innovators, not necessarily business people, Dees says. They're interested in reforming or revolutionizing some sort of pattern of production or service. He points to Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, and Millard Fuller, co-founder of Habitat for Humanity International — both of whom were honored as social entrepreneurs — as examples of social innovators.

Innovators typically create nonprofits with unique approaches that can help them better secure funding from individuals, corporations, community groups and the government. As such, they don't operate as businesses in the traditional sense, Dees says.
Lowry from Skoll says these "social entrepreneurs don't want to give a man a fish or even teach a man to fish. They want to change the fishing industry." To be a social entrepreneur, "you have to fundamentally change or eliminate a problem," he says.

Social Enterprise

Enterprise entrepreneurs account for the other side of the social entrepreneurship coin. To avoid the constant search for funding that nonprofits must bear, many businesses "are market-based and use business methods for providing services or tackling a problem," Dees says. In this respect, these ventures function more like traditional enterprises than their innovator counterparts, he says.

While socially innovative ventures typically operate as nonprofits, social enterprises can be either nonprofit or for-profit. Also, innovators tend to use their organizations as vehicles for changing public policy while enterprise entrepreneurs influence markets and bring about changes via business initiatives.

Become a Social Entrepreneur

Imagine having an exciting and rewarding career that gives you the opportunity to make a living doing what you love while making the world a better place. Welcome to social entrepreneurship!

Do you feel inspired to use your talents to help others? Would you like to change the world, or change the lives of a group of people? Do you feel passionate about the environment, human rights, education, literacy, health, or another cause that benefits humanity?
Now is the time to start doing work you believe in by becoming a social entrepreneur and starting your own nonprofit business.

As a nonprofit business founder (also known as a social entrepreneur) you can get paid to do good. Although you can't personally earn a profit when you start a non-profit organization, your nonprofit business can create a job for you doing meaningful work that benefits society.

For example, can you imagine yourself as a social entrepreneur starting and leading a nonprofit business that is working to:

Protect our environment
Increase appreciation of the arts
Raise awareness and funds to prevent illness
Improve educational opportunities for children
Help the poor in the U.S. or other countries
Encourage diversity and tolerance
Assist elderly people to live with dignity
Provide relief in emergency situations
Shelter abandoned or abused animals
Another cause you believe in

As founding member of a nonprofit business you will decide how to run the organization. You will lay the groundwork for deciding what issues to address, what programs to run, and how to spend your funds.

When you start a nonprofit business, you can directly help the people who need it. Your programs could change people’s lives and their futures.

As a social entrepreneur, you'll enjoy freedom from the “rat race” and use a new kind of measuring stick for your achievements: one that measures dollars raised, lives changed, and people helped.

You may travel the world for your cause, meeting with world leaders or people grateful for your help. For many social entrepreneurs, having hands-on involvement and seeing the immediate results of their effort are great rewards and motivators.

If you have the desire and determination to see your dream become a reality, you can become a social entrepreneur and start a nonprofit business. No special education or experience is necessary to break into this career and succeed. Some paperwork and filing fees can get your nonprofit started.

However, if you’re like most people who think about starting a nonprofit organization, you’re probably excited about putting your nonprofit idea into action, but overwhelmed by the process. You probably have questions such as: