1.4 Introduction to the social enterprise and the social enterprise spectrum

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En provenance du cours de University of Pennsylvania

Social Impact Strategy: Tools for Entrepreneurs and Innovators

325 notes

University of Pennsylvania

Social Impact Strategy: Tools for Entrepreneurs and Innovators

325 notes

This course offers an introduction to social impact strategy and social entrepreneurship, including key concepts, an overview of the field, and tools to get started as a changemaker. Students will learn how to innovate and design new ideas and new organizational forms to implement those ideas. Students who take this course will be better prepared to launch social impact organizations of their own invention. By moving through four stages, Define, Design, Pilot, and Scale, students will turn their passion for changing the world into concrete plans for launching a nonprofit or for-profit venture designed to achieve a social goal. This course will allow students to systematically think through problems; develop and test an innovative solution; assess risk, competition, and performance; and spread impact in a way that is financially sustainable. Students who complete the course become eligible to apply for an in-person educational experience, called the Global Social Impact House. GSIH is a seven-day residential program that provides fellows with the tools, community and training they need to advance their ventures. Workshops are customized to the needs of fellows and explore advanced concepts in business models, design thinking and leadership. The program is also designed to help fellows build meaningful, global connections while living together in an inspirational host location. For more information on the Global Social Impact House, please visit: socialimpactstrategy.org/residential/gsih

À partir de la leçon

Introduction

Learn about the key qualities of social innovation, social enterprise, and social entrepreneurs. How do social entrepreneurs approach problem solving? How might we identify social initiatives that are truly innovative in their approach to delivering on their mission, sustaining their venture, or scaling their impact? This module introduces the topic and offers examples of initiatives you might study as cases organizations throughout the course.

0.1. What to Expect in this Course1:50

1.1 Introduction to Social Innovation6:25

1.2 Traditional approaches to public problem solving4:49

1.3 A social entrepreneur's approach to problem solving6:17

1.4 Introduction to the social enterprise and the social enterprise spectrum6:28

1.5 The Importance of the business model1:21

1.6 Traits of social enterprise across the spectrum6:10

1.7. Meet Carlos and Coco2:46

1.8. Anatomy of a Social Entrepreneur2:40

Rencontrer les enseignants

Peter Frumkin
Professor
Nonprofit Leadership Program, School of Social Policy & Practice

[MUSIC]

In our last session we talked a little bit about social entrepreneurs and

social innovation.

Today I want to introduce a little bit different concept,

the concept of social enterprise and

show how it fits in between the two concepts we've already been working on.

So we know what social entrepreneurs are.

They're these dreamers, these practical dreamers who have big ideas for

changing the world.

And they'll do anything necessary to get there.

Social innovation, as we said, is a novel fresh solution to a problem that involves

some kind of improvement in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, or costs.

But in between this concept of social enterprise.

And social enterprise is the vehicle, the institutional form that

social entrepreneurs are going to employ to get to their goal.

And these social enterprises meld and

bring together both concerns about mission and margin.

Together they're going to unite them in a new form in some cases.

And what I want to explore today is how the forms used by social entrepreneurs can

change, and very substantially.

So let's think a little bit about these three concepts in very practical,

simple terms.

Think about micro-finance as we talked before.

Think about Muhammad Yunus.

Muhammad Yunus is the social entrepreneur.

He's the man who drove this fundamental global movement and

innovation that turned banking upside down, and said that banking must be

available to the poor because they are the ones who need it most.

And he radically changed the terms and the scale of banking to make it accessible

to millions and millions of people around the world.

So he's a social entrepreneur.

His social innovation is micro-finance.

But in between, he needed an institution.

He needed a form.

He created a social enterprise called Grameen Bank that would lend

money to the poor and with using repayment of the loans,

be able to continuously make more and more loans over time.

So you need a social entrepreneur and you need a social innovation, but

you also need in the middle a form, a vehicle, a social enterprise.

Now, one of the interesting things about social entrepreneurs

is that the vehicles that they use range greatly.

For social entrepreneurs,

a big question will come up about what type of organization to create.

Should it be for-profit, non-profit or something in between?

Today we're going to explore this question of sector selection and

organizational types in the social enterprise system,

just to give you a little better sense of all the options that are out there,

the many different possibilities that are present for social entrepreneurs.

Think about an idea of a spectrum, not black or

white, one type of organization or another, for-profit or non-profit.

I want you instead to imagine a spectrum of organizations,

ranging from purely non-profit and charitable to entirely for-profit.

But in between those two poles I want you to think about the possibility that there

are organizational forms and types that are spread across those two poles.

And they give you more choice than the pure kind of binary choice of for

profit, nonprofit.

This idea of social enterprise spectrum was first promulgated by Greg Dees.

It's been an important idea in the sector because it helped us

break free from the idea that there was just two options available.

In fact, there are many other possibilities for social entrepreneurs.

So let's look at this spectrum.

And we'll see that on the polar ends, we do recognize traditional

charitable organizations and for profit organizations.

But in between, we see some other forms.

We've seen the rise in the last 20 years of a lot of nonprofits that are entirely,

or mostly, dependent on earned income, fees that they charge to clients,

dues, service fees that they collect to make the enterprise work.

Those nonprofits are much more commercialized,

market sensitive than traditional charities that simply depend on donations.

So already, as we go from left to right,

we start to see that among nonprofits, there are the purely charitable nonprofits

that are designed only to be driven by donations and the goodwill of others,

to organizations that are more market positioned around delivering a service for

which there is an actual demand and for which people will actually pay a fee.

When we think of particularly health nonprofits and

education nonprofits, where fees and tuition and charges

are an important part of the engine that makes these enterprises work long term.

Then we start at the other end, the right hand side, and we think of traditional

businesses that just simply go after profits, and nothing else.

But we can also move a little bit over and start to see that there's a large

number of business firms that also have a social dimension to them,

that they have a conscience.

They have a sense of corporate social responsibility and

the desire to do something for the community beyond just generate revenue.

So there's a difference between traditional pure for profits, and

then the growing class of businesses that see their mission as being broader than

that, as having some kind of social relevance and impact.

And then in between, in the center of the spectrum, are a complicated group of

new organizations that are hybrid in form, that combine both nonprofit entities and

for profits working in collaboration with each other under a single umbrella in

a hybrid form that tries to marry both the features of a nonprofit and of a for

profit enterprise.

If you think about the spectrum as continuous,

not as categorical, that these are not boundaries but

instead a progression, you can think about the range in which

organizations pursue social impact versus profit-making, the way in which

they interact with a group of diverse stakeholders in the nonprofit context

to a well-defined group of owners and shareholders in the for profit context.

And you can also think about the way in which funds are handled.

Are they reinvested and put back into the enterprise in the nonprofit form, or

do they distribute it outward toward shareholders in the for profit form?

A lot of different possible dimensions, but across all these dimensions there's

actually variation from pure to mixed approaches.

[MUSIC]

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