Social Enterprise & Social Investing

The founder of Ashoka, a network of global social entrepreneurs, is taking on education to change the world

Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend -- not for what they get done.

LAUNCH is a global initiative to identify and support the innovative work poised to contribute to a sustainable future and accelerate solutions to meet urgent challenges facing our society.

For the past few years I've been serving in an informal advisory capacity for a company called SecondMuse, which is learning to apply the art and science of collaboration to the betterment of the world. Some of their projects include Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) and Launch.

Last spring we co-authored a chapter on collaboration in a book called Creating Good Work: The World’s Leading Social Entrepreneurs Show How to Build A Healthy Economy. This week we were asked to publish a blog post on the Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire.

The Creating Good Work series features contributions from some of the foremost social innovators in the world, writing about what is being built to shift those social issues that often feel so intractable.

The bloggers in this series are a loose federation of colleagues brought together in the bookCreating Good Work - The World's Leading Social Entrepreneurs Show How to Build a Healthy Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

The themes explored in these blog posts will focus on the common efforts being made to demonstrate how we can create good work while benefiting others and strengthening the social well-being and economic fabric of our communities.

This is the focus for Week 3 in Howard Rheingold’s course – Towards a Literacy of Cooperation We have been introduced to social dilemmas principally through the excellent work of Peter Kollock, who...

When he realized his wife had to choose between buying family meals and buying her monthly "supplies," Arunachalam Muruganantham vowed to help her solve the problem of the sanitary pad. His research got very very personal -- and led him to a powerful business model. (Filmed in Bangalore as part of the TED Global Talent Search.) He created a system of simple machines to make modern sanitary napkins -- giving millions of women in his home country and around the world access to hygiene.

Water will be this century’s largest crisis because unlike energy, there is no alternative to water: all the world’s H20 is already on earth. Not one person or organization can tackle all of the complexities of water stewardship alone.

PepsiCo's work with Water.org in India is a compelling study of how community work and local engagement not only build trust but are also smart business.

The synergy of the public and private sectors, NGOs and community groups is crucial if the vexing problems that water poses will ever be addressed.

Social Media is rooted in relationships, the dynamic interaction and collaboration between real people. We learned and continue to learn how to communicate in public forums, evolving our personal views on privacy and uncertainty as we transform from digital introverts to social extroverts.

This is our industrial revolution and its reward for participation is relevance. The socialization of online societies democratized the publishing industry and equalized influence.

The passing of the Benefit Corporation Act is an important win for the tipple bottom line. If implemented, monitored and enforced successfully it has the potential to significantly expand the landscape of corporate responsibility. Building a network of benefit corporations has powerful implications for the development of sustainable supply chains.

Moreover, integration of the legislation in economic development strategies can more holistically boost local economies. Attracting impact investors and capital to fuel expansion requires improved aggregation, transparency and accessibility of data.

ChangeMatters and the Smith School of Business have done a commendable job of pulling together the disparate data on benefit corporations and LLCs to date; such research should be continued and expanded. Click here for the full report on the ChangeMatters website.

The bible for social entrepreneurs in which experts in the field of social entrepreneurship share their experience, knowledge and wisdom.

A rich guide book that recounts the stories of some of the most successful social entrepreneurial programs operating today, with real life examples of how they overcame both physical and societal barriers to create a lasting impact on the world. 

The lessons contained in this volume are an asset to any social entrepreneur looking for new and innovative ways to have a positive impact and change the world around them, be they at their initial concept phase or a successful venture looking to expand their sphere of influence.

Featuring contributions from some of the world's best social ventures such as: Benetech, Brac-USA, Root Capital, Second Muse, Share Our Strength, and YouthBuild, the lessons imparted in Creating Good Work are an asset to any social entrepreneur searching for the best way to make their vision into a reality.

Social dilemmas are formally defined by two outcome-relevant properties: (1) each person has an individual rational strategy which yields the best outcome (or pay-off) in all circumstances (the non-cooperative choice, also known as the dominating strategy); (2) if all individuals pursue this strategy it results in a deficient collective outcome--everyone would be better off by cooperating (the deficient equilibrium).

When most well-intentioned aid workers hear of a problem they think they can fix, they go to work. This, Ernesto Sirolli suggests, is naïve. In this funny and impassioned talk, he proposes that the first step is to listen to the people you're trying to help, and tap into their own entrepreneurial spirit. His advice on what works will help any entrepreneur. Ernesto Sirolli got his start doing aid work in Africa in the 70's -- and quickly realised how ineffective it was.