Social Entrepreneurship

It can—and perhaps already has—become somewhat of a trendy obsession, as this article from the Nonprofit Quarterly explains.

An excerpt.

“How to thrive in turbulent times, improve organizational sustainability, and generate significant social impact are crucial questions currently confronting many nonprofit leaders and boards. There appears to be an answer within reach, and its formula is as simple as it is powerful: you and your agency need to become more entrepreneurial.

“Over the last ten years, the fascination with and interest in social entrepreneurship seem to have grown exponentially. Today, this concept has positioned itself at the very heart of discussions about the future and evolution of the nonprofit sector, as a number of nonprofit executives have “embraced social entrepreneurship as a model of management.” There are several reasons behind this fast development, and I want to mention two in particular.

“First, despite the many constructive and positive impacts created by nonprofit organizations both locally and nationally, there exists a looming fear that our current efforts are not reaching far enough fast enough, and that traditional ways of addressing community needs and social issues lack the transformational capacity to deal with many of today’s complex and new social problems. In other words, the search is on for a new paradigm—a “game-changer”—based on fresh and different ways to create systemic change.

“Second, corresponding with this search for novel and innovative ways to deal with social issues, a new generation of philanthropists and institutional donors has been eager to promote the idea that the key to solving all sorts of pressing social predicaments is to be found in business principles and practices. As the story goes, the challenges and perceived inefficiencies of our current approach to social problems will, as Forbes.com described it, “ultimately be properly managed, or maybe even solved, when desperate governments and NGOs finally surrender their ideologies and tap the private sector for help.”

“Social entrepreneurship has united these two ideas to form a powerful fusion from which a new approach is indeed emerging, one that is backed by high-profile advocates like Bill Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize–winner Muhammad Yunus. The nonprofit literature has also noted that the means and tactics of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise “[are] being accorded a status of—if not quite a panacea—then at least a significantly important emergence in the societal management of key social needs.

“Despite the tremendous energy and excitement surrounding social entrepreneurship, many nonprofit practitioners find it a highly elusive and difficult topic. I believe that one of the fundamental reasons behind this elusiveness lies within the social entrepreneurship phenomenon itself. More specifically, in contrasting what is being said with what we know about this phenomenon, I have started to believe that in many aspects social entrepreneurship is a fetish, an object of desire—more important for what it symbolizes than for its substance and applicability to nonprofits. My purpose here, then, is to discuss some of these symbolic properties and illustrate what makes them powerful, but also what makes them problematic.

“Social Entrepreneurship as Dream Catcher

“What exactly does it take to be more (socially) entrepreneurial? Given the praise for the concept and the frequent calls for a more entrepreneurial nonprofit sector, one might think this basic and crucial question has an obvious answer, which is why it is almost ironic that one of the few areas of agreement in this field is that there is no agreement about how to define or operationalize social entrepreneurship. But rather than undermining its legitimacy, this lack of precision has only added to the mystique and power vested in the social entrepreneurship phenomenon. Absent any right or wrong way to conceptualize social entrepreneurship, it has transcended into a shape-shifter that can take on almost any form—or, as Humpty Dumpty formulated it: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” This becomes evident when one considers the vast number of activities that all manage to fit under the social entrepreneurship conceptual umbrella, ranging from seemingly vague efforts to be more “creative,” “innovative,” and “bold” to more targeted strategies such as the application of business/market principles or the creation of earned income–generating programs. As a consequence, there is a huge smorgasbord of options and recommendations from which nonprofits can pick and choose.

“The obvious problem with this Humpty Dumpty aspect of social entrepreneurship is that a concept that means everything means nothing, and therefore has virtually no utility for practitioners.”