Nonprofits
Monk E-Business
LaserMonks, a multimillion-dollar enterprise, sells ink-jet cartridges and other office supplies online to support its Cistercian abbey in Wisconsin and to help others.
Social Enterprises - Most Popular
Podcast
Panel Discussion - Skoll World Forum: Hybrid Business Models
How do you use for-profit activities to fund your social entrepreneurship mission? In this panel discussion at the Skoll World Forum, experts talk about how to combine for- and nonprofit activities for greatest effect. They show that business and nonprofit can mix, drawing on examples such as efforts to profitably provide water to poor villagers by training street children to run businesses, and franchising medical care to creating a transparent market place for handmade goods.
Nonprofits
Soup Kitchen Confidential
To share its expertise without jeopardizing its mission, FareStart spun out a new organization.
Social Innovations
Dialing for Development
The world's neediest people are using mobile phones in ways that were never intended, and with great success. With wireless technologies, Indian farmers are finding out the latest crop prices, Nigerian youth are learning how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, and Peruvian citizens are reporting criminal activity in their neighborhoods. Yet dialing into these powerful tools is not always straightforward. The author explains how to make the wireless revolution ring in economic growth and prosperity for people living at the bottom of the pyramid.
Government
Social Enterprise in Scotland: The World Forum
The first Social Enterprise World forum focuses on how to use business to accomplish social outcomes.
Social Innovations
LivingGoods Calling
LivingGoods sends its version of Avon ladies—white-uniformed "health promoters"—knocking on doors in hundreds of Ugandan communities.
Social Innovations
Microloan Sharks
Commercial microfinance institutions (MFIs) must calculate two bottom lines: alleviating poverty for clients and also generating profits for investors. To achieve the latter goal, some MFIs charge their impoverished clients exorbitant interest rates. The recent Banco Compartamos IPO in Mexico raises a red flag, demonstrating how easily well-intentioned MFIs and their investors can shift from microlending to microloan-sharking.
Nonprofits
She’s Crafty
World of Good connects female artisans in poor countries with retailers (including Whole Foods Market, pictured) in the West.