One well known contemporary social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus, founder and manager of Grameen Bank and its growing family of social venture businesses, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.[6] The work of Yunus and Grameen echoes a theme among modern day social entrepreneurs that emphasizes the enormous synergies and benefits when business principles are unified with social ventures. [7] In some countries - including Bangladesh and to a lesser extent the USA - social entrepreneurs have filled the spaces left by a relatively small state. In other countries - particularly in Europe and South America - they have tended to work more closely with public organizations at both the national and local level.
In India, a Social Entrepreneur can be a person, who is the Founder, Co-Founder or a Chief Functionary (may be President, Secretary, Treasurer, CEO, or Chairman) of a social enterprise, which is primarily a NGO, which raises funds through some services (often fund raising events and community activities) and occasionally products. Rippan Kapur of Child Rights and You and Jyotindra Nath of Youth United, are such examples of Social Entrepreneurs, who are the founders of the respective organizations.
Today, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations, foundations, governments and individuals also play the role to promote, fund, and advise social entrepreneurs around the planet. A growing number of colleges and universities are establishing programs focused on educating and training social entrepreneurs.
In the UK in 2002 seven leading not for profit organisations established UnLtd - The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs. It holds a £100 million endowment especially to invest in social entrepreneurs in the UK. UnLtd provides individuals with cash awards and practical support that includes coaching, training and networking opportunities to help develop community projects. UnLtd Ventures is the in-house consultancy division of UnLtd and focuses on a number of outstanding social entrepreneurs, providing them with business support and helping them to scale up or replicate their organisations or get investment ready. Another of their operations, UnLtd Research, is fast becoming the world's primary source of evidence and thinking around Social Entrepreneurship. Its central purpose is to lead the global business, public policy and academic debates about the role of Social Entrepreneurship in community regeneration, employment and growth strategies.
The Social Enterprise Coalition (SEC) is another coalition in the UK which represents a wide range of social enterprises, regional and national support networks and other related organisations.[8]
South East Asia Pacific based Global Indian Foundation Global Indian Foundation which is headquartered in Singapore runs schools for gifted tribal or adivasi students in Gujarat, India. The Public Private Partnership project aims to lift the education standards of the tribal students and make them employable in public or private sector.
The George Foundation's Women's Empowerment program empowers women by providing education, cooperative farming, vocational training, savings plan, and business development. In 2006 the cooperative farming program, Baldev Farms, was the second largest banana grower in South India with 250 acres (1.0 km2) under cultivation.[9] Profits from the farm are used for improving the economic status of the workers and for running the other charitable activities of the foundation.[9]
By Stupid Common Man is a volunteer online association of Business professionals from various Industries for revival of sick industries in Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh is the biggest producer of entrepreneurs in India but also has the largest history of entrepreneurial failure. This is an open forum with free membership and seeks the participation of a broader intellectual population. This is a unique social entrepreneurial initiative for a noble cause.
Some have created for profit organizations. A recent example is Vikram Akula founder CEO of SKS Microfinance, the McKinsey alumnus who started a microlending venture in villages of Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Though this venture is for profit, it has initiated a sharp social change amongst poor women from villages. Another great example is Brent Freeman, Norma LaRosa, and Nick Reder the Co-Founders of MARCsMovement [1] an online retail site for Moral And Responsible Companies (MARCs) that donates 5% of every sale to non-profits in the US that help teach today's youth to be the leaders of tomorrow. This online site aims to empower everyday online shoppers to make a difference in the world around them through everyday purchases.
There are continuing arguments over precisely who counts as a social entrepreneur. Some have advocated restricting the term to founders of organizations that primarily rely on earned income – meaning income earned directly from paying consumers. Others have extended this to include contracted work for public authorities, while others still include grants and donations. This argument is unlikely to be resolved soon.Peter Drucker, for example, once wrote that there was nothing as entrepreneurial as creating a new university: yet in most developed countries the majority of university funding comes from the state.
Organizations such as Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, the Skoll Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Root Cause, the Canadian Social Entrepreneurship Foundation, New Profit Inc. and Echoing Green among others, focus on highlighting these hidden change-makers who are scattered across the globe. Ashoka's Changemakers "open sourcing social solutions" initiative Changemakers uses an online platform for what it calls collaborative competitions to build communities of practice around pressing issues. The North American organizations tend to have a strongly individualistic stance focused on a handful of exceptional leaders, while others in Asia and Europe emphasize more how social entrepreneurs work within teams, networks and movements for change. The Skoll Foundation, created by eBay's first president, Jeff Skoll, makes capacity building "mezzanine level" grants to social entrepreneurial organizations that have already reach a certain level of impact, connects them through the annual Skoll World Forum and Social Edge, the Foundation's online community, and highlights their work through partnerships with the Sundance Institute, Frontline World, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and other film and broadcast outlets. Skoll also supports the field of social entrepreneurship, including through Skoll's founding of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the Said Business School at Oxford University.
Youth social entrepreneurship is an increasingly common approach to engaging youth voice in solving social problems. Youth organizationsand programs promote these efforts through a variety of incentives to young people.[10] One such program is Young Social Pioneers, which invests in the power and promise of Australia's young leaders. The program, which is an initiative of The Foundation for Young Australians, strengthens, supports and celebrates the role of young people in creating positive change in their communities. About Face International[2]has a program that promotes youth social entrepreneurship amongst middle school, high school and college students by providing interest-free loans, grants and mentorship. They also help middle schools, high schools and colleges form youth social entrepreneurship after school clubs onsite. The MARCsMovement[3] business model parallels such an approach by paying it forward with their commitment to help educate today's youth about the fundamentals of socially responsible businesses so that they can become progressive leaders of tomorrow.
Fast Company Magazine annually publishes a list of the 25 best social entrepreneurs, which the magazine defines as organizations "using the disciplines of the corporate world to tackle daunting social problems."[11] In 2009, BusinessWeek followed suit, publishing a review of American's 25 most promising social entrepreneurs, defined as "enterprising individuals who apply business practices to solving societal problems."[12]
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