📗Resources to dive into the world of social enterprises 🌼
A social enterprise is an organization that is primarily focused on social impact and is at least partially self-funded.
Rant on why I made this
When I was at Eckerd College I repeatedly bumped into the concept of social enterprises. First, in a course called Technology, Society, and The Environment, then through meeting the CTO of a social enterprise, and finally by taking a course called Social Entrepreneurship. Each step along the way I fell more in love with the concept of social enterprises. However, I never felt like there was an easy way to connect to the world of social enterprises.
Eventually, I set a Google Alert for weekly digests of anything related to “social entrepreneurs.” That worked okay but I still felt like I was missing out on something. Fast-forward a few years and I find myself heavily involved in a nonprofit called hackNY, working at The New York Times, and having a stronger urge than ever to learn about social enterprises. As such, I’ve started compiling this list of resources to make it easy for people to connect with the world of social enterprises. See the FAQs at the bottom for some common questions.
Wikipedia is a great place to explore and find related topics.
### News 📰 #### Finding Articles *
Pioneers Post - The Social
Enterprise Magazine. *
Impact Boom - Social impact
blog and podcast. * Harvard Business Review -
Articles tagged “social enterprise”
are infrequent but high quality. * Stanford Social Innovation Review -
Great publication with many articles tagged
social enterprise. *
The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
- Content about the foundation’s activities and opportunities. * Medium -
Content from all around about
social enterprise
and
social entrepreneurship. * Galileo Impact Stories |
YouTube
|
Kickstarter
| Website
* A small but growing organization dedicated to covering impact investing.
Content is often Russia oriented and not always directly about social
enterprises but much of the content is relative.
Here is a video summarizing
their work in 2019. *
Journal of Social Entrepreneurship
- The academic journal for the topic. *
The Straits Times
- Singapore based newspaper with articles about social enterprise.
| Title | Author | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs To Know | David Bornstein | 2010 | Great introduction to social entrepreneurship. Short and sweet with lots of great answers to common questions. |
Future Learn * Social Enterprise Program * By Middlesex University Business School & Jindal Centre for Social Innovation + Entrepreneurship program. * Free, three courses, nine weeks total. * According to this paper, the courses were quite impactful and helped start many social enterprises.
Philanthropy University
|
Interview with CEO
|
Origins
* Several free courses such as: Introduction to Fundraising,
Fundraising Strategies,
and Setting Up a Nonprofit Board.
edX
*
Business and Impact Planning for Social Enterprises
- By MIT. *
Disciplined Approach to Social Entrepreneurship
- By Curtin University.
Coursera
*
Social Entrepreneurship
- By Wharton Business School. One course, approximately nine hours of
work. *
Social Entrepreneurship Specialization
- By Copenhagen Business School. Three courses to complete over four
months.
Acumen Academy * Offers free and paid courses to help individuals create social change.
Academic institutions researching social enterprise:
| Title | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The Social Shift | 2018 | Four young adults travel across Canada interviewing social entrepreneurs. |
| The New Breed | 2020 | Follows three change-makers as they build social enterprises. |
See a feed of all these accounts by following my “Social Enterprise News” Twitter list here.
Q: What is the goal of this repo?
A: To provide resources for people to dive into the world of social
enterprises. To get people excited about social enterprises. To spread the
word of social enterprises.
Q: What do you like about social enterprises?
A: I love the idea of bringing the goodness of nonprofits and the
efficiency of business together. Not all nonprofits are inefficient and
not all businesses are bad. However, the potential of unleashing the
notoriously efficient business practices to maximize social impact is what
I want to encourage people to explore.
Q: Why social enterprise instead of social entrepreneurship?
A: I want to focus on the organizational structure rather than the
individuals within an organization. Social entrepreneurship can mean
anything from a large organization championing for social causes to a lone
person doing community development. While both of those are important and
valuable this is a resource geared towards people interested in the
organizational side of things.
Q: How is a social enterprise different from a nonprofit?
A: A social enterprise may be a nonprofit. While nonprofits are usually
focused on social impact they may not be generating any revenue to fund
themselves.
Q: Why not just add this information to Wikipedia?
A: Wikipedia is meant to contain information that’s encyclopedic in
nature. Meaning, it should contain the most important and verified
information in a well summarized form. This document is much more like a
phone book trying to link out to relative resources that are useful.