A social entrepreneur is someone who recognises a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organise, create, and manage a social enterprise venture to make social change. Social entrepreneurs like to tackle big problems and go about solving them in new ways. Social enterprises are launched to support and enable critical social missions as well as generate earned income for sustainability, and are becoming important vehicles of change in VWO’s and NPOs around the world.
Social entrepreneurship is the work of social entrepreneurs. A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture). Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital. Thus, the main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further social and environmental goals. However, whilst social entrepreneurs are most commonly associated with the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors, this need not necessarily be incompatible with making a profit. Social entrepreneurship practiced with a world view or international context is called international social entrepreneurship.
The terms social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship were used first in the literature on social change in the 1960s and 1970s. The terms came into widespread use in the 1980s and 1990s, promoted by Bill Drayton the founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, and others such as Charles Leadbeater. From the 1950s to the 1990s Michael Young was a leading promoter of social enterprise and in the 1980s was described by Professor Daniel Bell at Harvard as ‘the world’s most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises’ because of his role in creating more than sixty new organizations worldwide, including a series of Schools for Social Entrepreneurs in the UK. Another British social entrepreneur is Lord Mawson OBE. Andrew Mawson was given a peerage in 2007 because of his pioneering regeneration work. This includes the creation of the renowned Bromley by Bow Centre in East London. He has recorded these experiences in his book “The Social Entrepreneur: Making Communities Work” and currently runs Andrew Mawson Partnerships to help promote his regeneration work. The National Center for Social Entrepreneurs was founded in 1985 by Judson Bemis and Robert M. Price, and Jerr Boschee served as its president and CEO from 1991 to 1999.
Although the terms are relatively new, social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship can be found throughout history. A list of a few historically noteworthy people whose work exemplifies classic “social entrepreneurship” might include Florence Nightingale (founder of the first nursing school and developer of modern nursing practices), Robert Owen (founder of the cooperative movement), and Vinoba Bhave (founder of India’s Land Gift Movement). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some of the most successful social entrepreneurs successfully straddled the civic, governmental, and business worlds – promoting ideas that were taken up by mainstream public services in welfare, schools, and health care.
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. 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. 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, chief executive officer (CEO), or chairman) of a social enterprise, which primarily is 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. Jay Vikas Sutaria of Bhookh.com is a social entrepreneur who is leveraging the power of the Internet to fight hunger in India.
Another excellent example of a non-profit social enterprise in India is Rang De. Founded by Ramakrishna and Smita Ram in January 2008, Rang De is a peer-to-peer online platform that makes low-cost micro-credit accessible to both the rural and urban poor in India. Individuals get to directly invest in borrowers from across India, track their investments online and receive regular repayments, with a token 2% pa. ROI.
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. Source : Wikiedia
For Web Business Consultancy on Social Entrepreneurship, feel free to email : admin@krisaru.com