Editor’s note: In this guest post David Ellis, Managing Partner of Flow Equity, argues for more investment in developing world businesses that earn too much to qualify for microfinance, but too little to attract commercial investment. The barriers to development in Uganda are manifold. Charities need to work smarter. Democracy has to work better. But at [...]
I have long believed in the power of market forces and the need for social sector participants to adopt proven practices from the business community for the purpose of achieving impact at an exponentially greater scale. Dan Pallotta’s Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential was a revelation for me. My head bobbed nonstop in [...]
Last month, Nathalie McDermott, Director of On Road Media, a social media training social enterprise, left an insightful comment on my post about the danger of promoting the mythology of the social entrepreneur. Over the past 5 years, at gatherings and conferences etc., I have witnessed a new breed of professional “Social Entrepreneur” who is usually well-educated, well-spoken [...]
Editor’s note: This guest post is written by non-profit consultant Amy Carol Wolff. In it, she argues for more straight-forward communication between social sector organizations and their stakeholders about the impact they achieve. The social sector has gotten stuck. We have confused energy and vision with meaningless mission statements and empty slogans featuring words like “eradication”, “sustainability”, and [...]
What ever happened to thinking big? In the social sector, thinking small, micro to be exact, is all the rage, and perhaps with some reason. The blunt force of macro interventions like clumsy development aid have drawn the intense scrutiny of people like Bill Easterly. Failing the success of sweeping interventions, the sector has recently [...]
Last year, I read an article about a new social enterprise in the UK: a casino where the profits are used to fight gambling addiction. Yes, you’re reading that right—and it does actually exist. Caesars Palace is a part of Hospitality & Grow‘s £6m seafront complex in Great Yarmouth, where the long-term unemployed will receive jobs and training and profits will [...]
The Skoll Foundation, via its Social Edge website, just released a Social Entrepreneur Search Widget to help funders, bloggers, supporters, and peers find and connect with social entrepreneurs who have been vetted by leading awards programs including Skoll, Civic Ventures, Draper Richards, PopTech, and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. The widget is slick, [...]
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