References

Participants in the September Seminar Retreat read two key reference books listed below that provided information for activities, panels, and discussions at the September 2008 meeting:

1) Bornstein, David. (2004). How to Change the World: Social entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 320.

Considered by many the foundational recent book in this field, Bornstein's volume benefits from long association with key figures, such as William Drayton who founded Ashoka, and with social innovation ventures around the world. He offers cases of startups, as well as major cases of social entrepreneurial efforts in micro-lending, government and business collaborations, and individual pioneering. The volume's content offers few instances of community-centered social ventures that remain local or regional in their focus. However, many valuable points and core issues for discussion come from the cases given here.

2) Elkington, John, & Hartigan, Pamela. (2008). The Power of Unreasonable People: How social entrepreneurs create markets that change the world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.

The authors have both been linked, though in quite different ways, with social entrepreneurship for more than a decade. Elkington has given leadership to SustainAbility, an international consultancy that helps corporations think and work for social value, since 1987. Hartigan, long associated with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in Geneva, Switzerland, has been instrumental in identifying promising social innovations around the world.

The volume focuses on markets and marketing and offers useful ways of thinking about innovators, most of whom link in one way or another with either corporate or governmental efforts to achieve social goals. Small-community initiatives, green startups that link with the arts, and health and education partnerships receive little attention in this volume, but many of the concepts and principles merit study for adaptation.

An additional resource published since the September seminar is an examination by Paul Light of the Brookings Institute of the current state of social entrepreneurship.

Light, Paul. (2008) The search for social entrepreneurship. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute.

Light takes the position that social entrepreneurs bear certain characteristics grounded in moral commitment, boundless imagination and energy, and strong potential for building social capital to advance their idea. He considers social enterprises as dedicated first to business outcomes but through products and services of social benefit. His view of social entrepreneurship gives less attention to the economics of these ventures and he, unlike other writers on this topic, acknowledges both the individual social entrepreneur and collaborative or community entrepreneurial ventures. The volume includes several cases with comparative critical analysis.

The following sections include brief summary of topics as well as a selection of resources on each, that the International Youth Research Network (IYRN) sees as central to sustaining youth involvement in social innovations at the community level. Given here also are links to information on relevant resources from executive programs for nonprofit leaders, the latest "hot" books, and graduate programs in social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurship: Value, character, life cycle

Value: Social entrepreneurs provide innovative energy for combining social goals with moneymaking ventures and create new types of organizations. Some move from community interests and inspiration to national and sometimes international bases of operation. These groups draw attention from foundations and funding sources that honor creative individuals more often than they recognize innovative organizational entities. Rarely included for wide acknowledgment are community-centered initiatives. Resources included here contain information on individual leaders and world-recognized groups as well as organizational innovators and locally-focused entities.

Social values of these organizations, whether in small communities or with national/international reach, extend broadly. They range from addressing unmet social needs to expanding activism and education critical for change in education, health, and environmental sustainability. Inclusion and redistribution of power, along with expansion of access to information, communication outlets, and empowered positions in their communities, matter to the daily work of social entrepreneurships.

Character: Though often initiated and driven by ambitious leaders with skills in technology, communication, and personal presentation, these organizations generally create flat, flexible organizations. Paid staff members and volunteers work together, often with those thought of as being "served", to keep the operation alive and to determine ongoing priorities. The goal is accumulation and distribution of social capital for all involved.

These organizations develop and try out innovate solutions to intractable social problems, either ignored or out-of-reach for the public sector. Their most promising value lies in their forward thinking that puts identifying problems and considering unintended consequences ahead of creating simplistic solutions and practices. Social innovators generally want to enable local leadership and community members to develop principles that will remain generative for them in the face of changing conditions. Practices easily become detached from the contexts that generated the problem initially; as this happens, reliance on principles, inquiry, and alertness to a holistic perspective easily falls away.

Life cycle: Ideally, social entrepreneurships evolve and adapt to changing demographics, medical needs, environmental stress, and educational gaps and lapses. Life beyond five years after startup rarely happens for community-based social entrepreneurships. Grants, donations, and fellowships that may have flowed to the startup do not come easily for endowment, operations, management consultancy, or capital development for equipment, buildings, or forms of transport. Beyond the decline in startup funding, social entrepreneurships face the trials that come from transitions in leadership and the ongoing need to bring in new innovators who know and care about the local community.

Resources commonly available to large non-profits-social entrepreneurships among them-are out of reach for small organizations centered in community leadership, interests and needs. Venture capital, management consultancies, capital campaign advising, and executive seminars in leading schools of business require time, connections, and often financial resources. To justify the time and financial resources needed to take advantage of any of these is not easy. Such withdrawals from operations budgets in the face of other more immediate and pressing needs can rarely be sanctioned. So community social entrepreneurships struggle along, dependent on the inspiration and energy (and often the capital) of founders, volunteers, and, perhaps, some community partners.