Social Enterprise - Most Popular
Innovative ways that organizations are using and adapting business strategies to advance social and environmental well-being (more)
Rediscovering Social Innovation
Social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have become popular and positive rallying points for those trying to improve the world, but social innovation is a better vehicle for understanding and creating social change in all of its manifestations.
Nonprofits
Review: Out of Poverty
Polak offers entrepreneurial solutions to poverty in Asia and Africa.
Podcast
Stanford Social Entrepreneurship Day - Funding Social Enterprises
With valuable advice for all types of entrepreneurs, this Stanford Entrepreneurship Week panel offers a unique perspective for funding a social enterprise startup. In this panel discussion, Kriss Deiglmeier leads an engaging discussion between funders and social entrepreneurs that provides actionable advice and insightful lessons in this discussion from the second annual Social Entrepreneurship Day at Stanford University.
Podcast
Natalie Portman - Eradicating Poverty Through Microfinance
One of the biggest problems that low-income people around the world face is the lack of access to capital that might otherwise help them rise out of poverty. Invited to Stanford, actress Natalie Portman turns the spotlight on her work to promote FINCA's International Village Banking Campaign, aiming to bring financial services to one million of the world's lowest-income families through 100,000 Village Banks by 2010.
Podcast
Lynne Patterson - Empowering Women in Latin America
One of the best methods proven to alleviate poverty is microlending to women, who have a great track record for using loans wisely to create small business enterprises that sustain their entire families. Host of the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford, Lynne Patterson talks about the creation of Pro Mujer, an international microfinance and women's development network in Latin America. She details the mission, objectives, methods, and progress, illuminating the organization's empowering impact on the lives of its many clients.
Podcast
Brij Kothari - Literacy Through Entertainment
What do you get when you combine a love of Bollywood music videos with widespread illiteracy? Brij Kothari sees an opportunity to make the world a better place. By subtitling popular entertainment, he helps millions learn to read in a fun way. He's also creating multiplatform stories that will be seen on TV, read on mobile phones, and printed in books. Talking to Design for Change host Sheela Sethuraman in this audio interview, Kothari describes how he improves lives by incorporating education into everyday entertainment.
The Funding Gap
Social enterprises combine the best of the nonprofit and for-profit worlds, but that very innovation has made it difficult for them to raise money. Philanthropists are reluctant to give grants to profit-making organizations, and commercial investors are wary of investing in organizations that are driven by a social mission. The authors explore the social enterprise capital market and offer short- and long-term solutions to this funding gap.