Baked Goods
Dancing Deer Bakery helps most when it keeps its eye on the bottom line.
Dancing Deer Bakery helps most when it keeps its eye on the bottom line.
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.
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.
Who are social entrepreneurs and why does what they do matter?
Social entrepreneurs not only must understand the broad environment in which they work, but also must shape those environments to support their goals, when feasible. Borrowing insights from the field of ecology, the authors offer an ecosystems framework to help social entrepreneurs create long-lasting and significant social change.
Social entrepreneurship is attracting growing amounts of talent, money, and attention, but along with its increasing popularity has come less certainty about what exactly a social entrepreneur is and does.
By working closely with the clients and consumers, design thinking allows high-impact solutions to social problems to bubble up from below rather than being imposed from the top.
Fair Trade-certified coffee is growing in sales, but strict certification requirements are resulting in uneven economic advantages for coffee growers and lower quality coffee for consumers.
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.
Understanding these six important differences will both facilitate better conversations and help channel funds appropriately.