Attending the Skoll World Forum at Oxford? Be sure to catch CASE Faculty Director Greg Dees

Greg Dees served on the Skoll World Forum Advisory Committee this year and will attend the Forum at Oxford from March 27th to the 29th. On March 26, before the official start of the Forum, he will present some of the early findings from our field building project to a session sponsored by the University Network for Social Entrepreneurship, an online resource clearinghouse and action-oriented discussion forum that aims to enable the expansion of social entrepreneurship education and participation around the world. On the following day, he will also provide an academic framing for a practitioner-academic dialogue hosted by Ashoka's Changemakers that will explore the open sourcing of social solutions. During the Forum, Greg will also present ideas that are emerging from our research project on "Scaling Social Impact" in a panel discussion on scale and growth that includes Alex Nicholls of Oxford, Roberto Gutierrez of the Andes University, and Francesco Perrini or Bocconi University.

Defining Social Entrepreneurship: Important for Research, Practice, and Building a Field

Three recent articles highlight the importance of defining social entrepreneurship in a way that advances research, practice, and efforts to build and strengthen the field. The current issue of the Social Enterprise Reporter summarizes a piece by CASE Faculty Director Greg Dees and Managing Director Beth Anderson that focuses on Enterprising Social Innovation, arguing that the study of social entrepreneurship should focus on “innovations that blend methods from the worlds of business and philanthropy, creating sustainable social value with the potential for large-scale impact.” In a complementary piece, Social Entrepreneurs on Common Ground, The Institute for Social Entrepreneurs’ Jerr Boschee embraces that framing as an important step forward that will help “create a framework for the next generation of practitioners.” At the same time, University of Toronto’s Roger Martin and the Skoll Foundation’s Sally Osberg collaborated across academia and practice in Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition, where they promote a rigorous definition of social entrepreneurship to strengthen the development of the field. Martin and Osberg distinguish social entrepreneurship from social service provision, which includes direct action to maintain and improve an extant system, and social activism, which refers to indirect action to create and sustain a new, just equilibrium. By their definition, social entrepreneurs target “an unfortunate but stable equilibrium,” address it with “inspiration, direct action, creativity, courage, and fortitude,” and ultimately affect “the establishment of a new stable equilibrium that secures permanent benefit for the targeted group and society at large.” 

“Mixing Mission and Business,”an Aspen Institute report on New Legal Forms and Tax Structures for Social Enterprise and Other Hybrid Organizations

In late 2006, the Aspen Institute gathered more than 40 attorneys, investors, finance and tax consultants, and social entrepreneurs to address the challenges social entrepreneurs face in structuring and financing their "hybridized" work. Most of the group embraced the idea of creating a new corporate form or changing the tax code to accommodate "hybrid" activity, insisting that what currently exists is not sufficient for fostering social entrepreneurship. An idea that gained significant attention from participants was modifying the current tax code to include a new "social benefit" designation that certifies any organization, nonprofit or for-profit, as operating in a business-like manner and also having an underlying charitable mission. Attendees agreed that information on existing hybrid organizations should be compiled and made publicly available, with the hope that a centralized source would lead to the development and testing of new organizational and financial models, as well as standards of accountability for social benefit organizations.

The full summary of the group's discussion and its recommendations for next steps on this effort is now available at www.nonprofitresearch.org/NewLegalForms. For more information about this initiative, please contact Rachel Mosher-Williams, Project Director, at rwilliams@aspeninstitute.org.