SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The major boost in social entrepreneurship was given by the Nobel Prize winner Dr. Mohammad Yunus when his brain-child Grameen bank became successful in helping people lift themselves out of poverty in rural Bangladesh by providing them with credit without requiring collateral. Yunus developed his revolutionary micro-credit system with the belief that it would be a cost-effective and scalable weapon to fight poverty.  It was soon realized that profits can be made along with serving the society, provided you treat profits as a means and not the end result

What is Social Entrepreneurship?

There have been numerous attempts at defining Social Entrepreneurship. For the course of our discussion lets pick the broadest:

“Social entrepreneurship is the work of a social entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society.” 

There are 3 key components that emerge out of this definition and are more of less common when it comes other variations of the definition of Social Entrepreneurship:

the problem a sustainable solution social change

Is Social Entrepreneurship really a new trend?

Strictly speaking no. Considering its broad definition no one can deny that its practice is far more ancient.  The roots and first usage of the term ‘Social Entrepreneurship’ can be dated back in the literature of social change in 1960′s and 1970′s. What is rather new is the trend of categorizing these socially entrepreneurial ventures as Social Enterprises fuelled by a recent influx of capital availability to fund such initiatives.

Social enterprises

Social enterprises are social mission driven organizations which trade in goods or services for a social purpose. Their aim to accomplish targets that are social and environmental as well as financial is often referred to as having a triple bottom line. Social enterprises are profit-making businesses set up to tackle a social or environmental need.

Social enterprises Rather than maximizing shareholder

value, their main aim is to generate profit to further their social and environmental goals. Therefore some commentators describe them as ‘not-for-profit’ as their profits are not (at least primarily) distributed to financial investors

Social enterprises

It could be that the profit (or surplus) from the business is used to support social aims (whether or not related to the activity of the business, as in a charity shop), or that the business itself accomplishes the social aim through its operation, for instance by employing disadvantaged people (social firms) or lending to businesses that have difficulty in securing investment from mainstream lenders.

YOUTH PHILANTROPHY

According to one study, “youth philanthropy is, at the broadest level, youth giving of their time, talents and treasure.” It is seen as an effective means in which youth develop knowledge of and participate in philanthropic projects such as volunteering, grant writing, and community service.

Youth philanthropy educates young people about social change in order to identify community problems and design the most appropriate solutions in a systemic way. Philanthropy in this case is defined as anything young people do to make the world around them a better place.

Philanthropy

Philanthropy is the act of donating money, goods, services, time or effort (often referred to as time, talent or treasure) to support a charitable cause, usually over an extended period of time and with a defined objective

Philanthropy is a major source of income for fine arts and performing arts, religious, and humanitarian causes, as well as educational institutions

During the past few years, philanthropy has become more mainstream, owing in part to the high profile of rock star Bono’s campaign to cancel Third World debt to developed nations; the Gates Foundation’s massive resources and ambitions, such as its campaigns to eradicate malaria and river blindness; and billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett’s donation in 2006 of $31 billion to the Gates Foundation.