Losing the Charity Mindset

Along with the burgeoning social entrepreneurship movement comes a bit of hubris that social entrepreneurs know better how to create social change than do the nonprofits that have been working toward social change for years.  Some social entrepreneurs argue that nonprofits are too set in their ways to embrace a new way of creating solutions.  I tend to disagree.  We can’t, nor should we, discount and dismiss an entire sector of people and organizations that have been working on social problems for centuries.  However, I do think that there are some things that nonprofits can learn from social entrepreneurs.  One of those is how to lose the charity mindset.

Nonprofits are sometimes referred to as “charities,” and it is a real misnomer.  But beyond semantics, the word, and more importantly the mindset, does a real disservice to organizations working toward change  A charity mindset is when an organization, its board, its funders or others promoting its work have a narrow view that the organization is benevolent, but not critical, to the world at large.  The charity mindset assumes that a nonprofit starts from the position of need, inadequacy, and burden, rather than a position of opportunity, strength, and effectiveness.  The charity mindset differs from a social entrepreneur mindset in a number of ways:

• Symptoms vs. Solutions: A charity, by its very definition, exists to provide aid to the needy, not to solve the underlying cause of the need.  This is not to say that every nonprofit can work toward solving an underlying problem; there will always be organizations that exist simply to provide basic needs (food, shelter, safety, etc.).  But I wonder if too many nonprofit organizations view their work as residing in the “charity” camp, instead of working, as social entrepreneurs do, to understand the cause of the need and how how they may be able to attack and solve it.




• Fundraising: A fundraiser in the charity mindset apologizes for the burden of asking someone for money, but a social entrepreneur offers investment opportunities to prospects.  Wendy Kopp from Teach for America went around evangelizing the Teach for America story and sought investors who wanted to get in on the ground level of an incredible opportunity to change the American public education system.




• Investment in Infrastructure: Charities spend every last penny on the program and leave little money for building the organization.  Social entrepreneurs understand that it takes organizations, infrastructure, systems, and talent to effectively execute on a solution to a social problem.




• Respect: Charities may be beloved by their supporters, but they may not garner a lot of respect from them.  Social entrepreneurs behave as equal partners with funders in creating solutions, and, as such, they command and receive real respect from investors, volunteers, partners and others.




• True Costs:  Charities like to claim that as much money as possible goes to direct services, but social entrepreneurs recognize the true costs of their endeavors and are open and honest with funders about those costs.  In fact they demand that funders understand and support those true costs.

I think the old adage is true, people will treat you the way you ask to be treated.  If a nonprofit acts like a charity, people will treat it like one.  Nonprofits need to stand up and demand to be treated as critical, equal partners in creating solutions.

Tags: charity, Fundraising, Nonprofits, Social Entrepreneurship, Teach for America, Wendy Kopp

Making a Social Impact Market Play

Nonprofits exist in a strange netherworld between market forces and social change. They are trying to create a solution to a social problem, but as much as some might like to deny it, that desired social change exists within a market economy. That means that in order to be successful, nonprofits, just like any business, must continually analyze, understand and create strategies around whatever market forces are at play (competition for funding, clients, partnerships, inputs, results; increased/decreased regulation; changing client/funder demand; changing input costs; changing technology, etc.).

The tendency among some of those working toward social impact is to assume that simply because they are doing good in the world, those market forces can somehow be ignored or dismissed. Good will win out over the market. But it is not a binary system. Organizations that are working toward good are very much subject to market forces and must be strategic about how to address them.

Which brings me to a SWOT analysis, an often misunderstood tool that can help nonprofits do just that.  Most people understand that a SWOT analysis helps an organization break down the internal forces at work (their own strengths and weaknesses) and the external opportunities and threats that face them in the marketplace. But once these are uncovered, the more important step is to translate those realities into strategies that increase the nonprofit’s position in the market, whether that is increased profit, increased social impact, or both.

Strengths are the resources, capabilities, core competencies, and experience that could be used to develop a competitive advantage, or a better position in the marketplace than their competitors, such as:

• Brand name
• Funder/investor retention
• Access to clients/customers
• Access to inputs required to create the desired social impact
• Cash reserves
• Demonstrated social impact
• Use/understanding of critical technology

Weaknesses are things that the nonprofit should possess in order to create a competitive advantage, but happen to lack. They can also be the flip side of a strength, such as a nonprofit that has a large staff (strength) but whose large staff makes it difficult to be flexible towards changing program requirements (weakness). Some examples:

• Lack of staff talent/expertise
• Limited network/relationships/alliances
• Low funder/investor retention rates
• Limited access to inputs required to create social impact
• Lack of demonstrated results

The External Analysis exposes the situation in the marketplace and how that situation positively (opportunities) or negatively (threats) could affect the organization. Opportunities are external realities that could result in greater social impact, profit and growth for the organization:

• Growing social need/customer demand
• New technologies that could decrease costs to deliver programs/products/services
• Relaxation of government regulations for addressing the social challenge
• Declining competitors for funding or program delivery

Threats are situations that have the potential to diminish the organization’s social impact/profitability/growth. For example:

• Increasing competitors
• Stricter regulations
• Increasing cost of inputs
• Diminishing client/customer demand
• Changing technology

But this analysis gets you nowhere if you don’t take the most important next step, which is to craft strategies from the results. The various strategies for the organization going forward fall into four categories:

1. Strength-Opportunity Strategies that use the organization’s strengths to go after external opportunities. For example when a nonprofit uses their strong brand name (strength) to expand into a newly emerging client need (opportunity). Teach for America has recently decided to take a version of their teacher recruitment program to schools outside of America.
2. Weakness-Opportunity Strategies that overcome a nonprofit’s weaknesses in order to go after external opportunities. For example when Kiva recently decided to give their loaners whose demand outstripped loanee supply (weakness) an opportunity to make loans to American entrepreneurs whose demand for loans due to the bank crisis and the recession were growing (opportunity).
3. Strength-Threat Strategies that harness a nonprofit’s strengths in order to overcome its vulnerability to external threats. For example a nonprofit that harnesses its well-connected board (strength) to strengthen their relationships with foundations and individual donors who are being bombarded by an increasing number of nonprofits (threat).
4. Weakness-Threat Strategies that create a defensive plan for preventing the nonprofit’s weaknesses from making it susceptible to external threats. For example when a nonprofit decides to go through the patent process to guard its unprotected results-achieving curriculum (weakness) from growing competitors (threat).

Creating and then employing these strategies allows a social impact organization to be proactive and opportunistic about market dynamics–market dynamics which very much play into whether the solution they seek will come to fruition.

Tags: Kiva, nonprofit, social impact, SWOT Analysis, Teach for America

Making Change the New Norm

It occurred to me in two conversations I had this morning that small change can create large change, but how exactly does that happen?

My first conversation was a phone call with George Overholser, from the Nonprofit Finance Fund and a leading thinker around new kinds of capital for nonprofit organizations.  I was getting some background from him on the whole movement to make growth capital (money necessary to build organizations rather than simply buy services) a reality for nonprofit organizations in preparation for my session later this week at the Social Capital Markets conference.

At the Nonprofit Finance Fund they have launched several exciting programs to help nonprofits secure the money necessary to scale great programs, such as the SEGUE program that takes the traditional nonprofit capital campaign approach and turns it on its head raising money not for a building, but rather for the patient capital required to pay the bills while a nonprofit figures out how to grow and make sustainable their business model.

My big question to George, however, was: How do we get these great new ideas, like patient capital (which is normal and accepted in the for profit world) prevalent and accepted in the nonprofit and philanthropic worlds?  The number of nonprofits and donors currently participating in growth capital deals is very small.

George’s response was that these new ideas don’t have to be widely accepted or embraced.  The end game is not to get all of the “mom and pop” nonprofits and donors to embrace these concepts.  Rather, he looks forward to the day when there are ten $20 million growth capital deals out in the marketplace, that that alone will create tremendous change.  He gave the example of Teach for America.  If they can grow their successful program throughout the country, there would be tremendous change in the education landscape as a result .  The end goal is to secure capital for a select few nonprofits that are uniquely poised to grow. He compared it to Apple, which is a company that makes billions of dollars, but has grown to that stage with only a few tens of millions, say $50 million, in growth capital. And Apple has transformed not only its industry, but really, how we all communicate, interact with data and live. That’s a pretty impressive impact for a $50 million investment in growth capital.  He argues that the same is possible in the nonprofit world.  We could have a handful of nonprofit growth capital deals and transform not only the nonprofit sector, but some enormous social problems.

An interesting hypothesis, but I don’t know if I buy it.  Which brings me to my second conversation of the morning, with Sean Stannard-Stockton of the Tactical Philanthropy blog.  Sean has been known for the past three years as a leading-edge thinker about how to make philanthropy more effective at delivering social impact.  He announced this morning that he is launching a new philanthropic advisory fund called Tactical Philanthropy Advisors.  The firm will advise high-net worth philanthropists (accounts of $1 million or more) on “the social impact of their financial investments, and work with their investment advisors to align their financial portfolios with their philanthropic goals.”

They are seeking to elevate philanthropic advising to the respect, time and resources that overall financial advising has enjoyed.  In this new firm, philanthropic advising is no longer an add-on service that a wealth management company offers its clients.  And their fee structure has them paid by a percentage of the overall portfolio an investor holds with them.  So, in essence, they are paid as a traditional financial advisor is paid, based on the performance of the overall portfolio, but in this case the portfolio return is a social, not a financial one.  They are also interesting because they are a for-profit company, with a social purpose and are applying to become a B Corp.  So the firm is and of itself a social business; they are social entrepreneurs charting this new landscape along with the rest of us.

You only need to read a few entries in Sean’s 3-year old Tactical Philanthropy blog to understand how this new firm could revolutionize how the philanthropic sector, and thus the nonprofit sector, operates.  Sean understands and believes in philanthropic equity, mission-related investing, scaling nonprofits, organization-building, and so on.  He understands these new ideas that George and others promote and could be a critical partner in helping philanthropists understand how to use their money more effectively to drive change in a sector that is undercapitalized and dysfunctional.

However, Sean and his firm will probably only work with a small group of the countless philanthropists out there, so again, what change does this signify?  And how do we bring along other philanthropists who cannot or will not be touched by Tactical Philanthropy Advisors?

It all comes down to the single question: How does change happen?

I would argue that it is not enough to have single examples in the largest nonprofits or among the largest philanthropists.  The Nonprofit Finance Fund, Teach for America, Sea Change Capital, Tactical Philanthropy Advisors and all the other cutting-edge thinkers and examples of how we can do things better are great and absolutely necessary.  Without innovation we have nothing.

But let’s not forget stage two, whenever it may come, that involves making these great examples the norm.  The day when all, or most, nonprofits understand and have access to the power of patient capital and capacity capital, when all or most philanthropists understand the power of investments rather than gifts and how to truly support social change. Ten deals are great, but they are just a start.  True change must be systemic, must be ingrained, must become the norm.  It can’t exist just on the East and West coasts.  It can’t just be in the understanding and practice of the largest, most resourced organizations. That’s why I started Social Velocity; I wanted to bring these cutting-edge ideas and practices to places, organizations and philanthropists that weren’t in the top 10, but were still instrumental to creating social change.  To really be transformative, these new ideas have to become common practice. As David Bornstein has put it:

An important social change frequently begins with a single entrepreneurial author: one obsessive individual who sees a problem and envisions a new solution, who takes the initiative to act on that vision, who gathers resources and builds organizations to protect and market that vision, who provides the energy and sustained focus to overcome the inevitable resistance, and who- decade after decade- keeps improving, strengthening, and broadening that vision until what was once a marginal idea has become a new norm.

I applaud people like Sean and George and the countless others who are working to change mindsets, organizations, systems and structures.  Let’s build on the innovation they have started and make those powerful ideas and examples the new norm.

Tags: B Corp, David Bornstein, George Overholser, growth capital, nonprofit, Nonprofit Finance Fund, Philanthropy, Sean Stannard-Stockton, SEGUE program, Social Capital Markets conference, Tactical Philanthropy, Teach for America

A False Dichotomy: Non-profit vs. For-profit Solutions

In a recent blog post, Tony Wang, a brilliant researcher at Lucy Bernholz’s  Blueprint Research & Design, a strategy consulting firm for philanthropy in the Bay Area, makes a thought-provoking, yet ultimately flawed argument about the social impact of nonprofits (which he calls charities) versus social businesses. Tony and I have sparred before on PRIs and mission-related investing, and I had to take up the cause again with his argument that poses a false dichotomy.

Tony’s underlying argument is that a for-profit business model is better able to deliver social impact per dollar than a nonprofit one.  He gives many reasons for this:

1. Dollars for charity are limited. True the nonprofit sector is undercapitalized, but that is changing, and will continue to change as the public, private and nonprofit sectors continue to converge and the social capital market, for both for-profit and nonprofit social impact organizations, grows.  The mere fact that nonprofits are undercapitalized is not a reason to dismiss nonprofit solutions out of hand.
2. Charity is often inefficient “ because of its lack of accountability to the people who are the primary beneficiaries of aid.”  This has been true in the past, but I think it is changing.  An increasing focus on metrics, brought on by the venture philanthropy movement and others, has encouraged nonprofits to track and demonstrate outcomes.  These aren’t perfect by any means and there is much work still to be done, but why not work to encourage better accountability rather than simply say nonprofits are inefficient?
3. Charity is often harmful and insulting to its recipients.  I agree that Western solutions to third world problems can sometimes be full of hubris, but this is no less true in social businesses than it is in nonprofits.  Read my post on the “missionary” nature of some social business solutions.
4. Business has a much easier time scaling: “it will be difficult for domestic nonprofits to scale when the federal government is the only viable answer and that international nonprofits will still struggle mightily with the issue.”  Government isn’t the only viable answer.  Some great organizations have been able to scale without government assistance (Teach for America, KIPP, Citizen Schools). And the beauty of nonprofit organizations is that scale doesn’t have to mean just the expansion of a single organization.  Rather, scale can mean the dissemination of a solution that works.  Because nonprofits worry less about competition, they are more likely to want to share best practices, models that work, and allow local adaptations of a solution from another area.

Because of all of this, Tony believes that “a lot of young social entrepreneurs…are starting to realize that business solutions and not charity solutions can be more ideal when it comes to maximizing impact (and philanthropy’s impact would be multiplied if it leveraged its capital to fund social impact businesses with true potential).”

I’m sorry, Tony, but I really disagree with this.  Why does it have to be either, or?  Why is one model inherently better able to create value than another? Rather, I would say that it depends on the problem and what the best solution is.  Yes, there are problems and inefficiencies within the nonprofit sector, but there are also some pretty major problems, and inefficiencies in the for-profit sector (dot-com bust, financial crisis, anyone?).

Rather, we need to take a holistic approach to social impact.  There need to be multiple tools available to social entrepreneurs, whether they be for-profit or nonprofit  (different business models, various financing, etc).  And let’s remember that there are some inherent problems with for-profit social impact models as well.  When a solution requires the appearance of impartiality, a nonprofit model might be more effective.

I think the whole point of the convergence and “resetting,” to quote Lucy Bernholz, that is going on is that the old dichotomies and definitions don’t work anymore.  We have to break out of the notion that the way we used to categorize things doesn’t apply anymore.  Structures are changing, new models are emerging.  We need to be flexible and analyze the best solution to each problem that faces us.  “One or the other” thinking just won’t cut it anymore.

Tags: Blueprint Research and Design, charity, Citizen Schools, KIPP, Lucy Bernholz, nonprofit, social business, Teach for America, Venture Philanthropy

5 Ways to Scale

Key to the entire social entrepreneurship movement is the idea of scale.  If we are truly going to solve a social problem, right a disequilibrium, or fix a crumbling institution the solution has to grow to scale.  It cannot stay small and secluded; it has to grow until it has changed the underlying system.  But scale can be a nebulous thing.  What does it mean, what does it look like, how does it happen?

Peter Frumkin, head of the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas at Austin and leading nonprofit management and philanthropy thinker and author, came up with a model for understanding the various forms scale can take.  His 5 Models for Scale provides a nice framework for understanding the broader implications of what scale is and what it can look like.  He defines scale as “creating a lasting and significant impact” and defines the five platforms  from which scale can emerge as:

1. Financial Strength: Scale comes from the financial strength and sustainability of a large and enduring institution (usually universities and museums).  Through endowments and deep donor relationships these institutions can weather most, if not all, economic situations and potentially exist indefinitely.  Scale here is not about outcomes or inputs, but rather about the institution itself and its ability to endure.
2. Program Expansion: Scale is a function of the increasing number of clients served.  By growing the number of program inputs (clients) by several multiples, a program can achieve scale.  This form of scale happens in one location, not to be confused with Multi-Site Replication (below).
3. Comprehensiveness: Scale here is achieved when a set of activities and interventions occur within one organization or a closely integrated collaboration of organizations.  For example, when the food, housing, education, childcare and healthcare needs of the homeless are all addressed through one integrated solution, in the case of Jane Addams’ Hull House.
4. Multi-site Replication: Scale in this case expands a program to other sites in the city, region, country or world.  This replication can be instigated either from within the organization (through franchises and chapters) or from outside of the organization through independent efforts of funders or other interested parties.  This form of scale often requires the vision and commitment of a single individual to make it a success, for example with Teach for America or KIPP (charter schools).
5. Accepted Doctrine: In its final form, scale does not involve growth or expansion of an organization or program, but rather an idea.  Scale occurs when a way of thinking or addressing a problem or field changes.  A particular organization or program does not control scale in this case, but rather a new model or way of addressing a problem reaches a “tipping point” where it suddenly becomes the norm.

Each model has its benefits and drawbacks.  For example, the Financial Strength model doesn’t necessarily mean that change is occurring, rather an institution merely persists.  The Program Expansion model, too, doesn’t guarantee impact, rather scale is about increasing the number of inputs.  The Accepted Doctrine model is difficult, if not impossible, to control and mold to a particular outcome.  And, as mentioned above, Multi-Site Replication relies heavily on a key individual, a very clear understanding and articulation of what makes the current model successful, and an ability to replicate that success.

I think this framework is a useful way to understand the various forms that scale can take.  It all goes back to the notion that in order for social entrepreneurship to be a successful movement, we have to understand what it is that we are doing and how we are doing it.  If broad and sweeping change in various areas of need is the ultimate goal, we have to be smart and strategic about how that change is happening and what form of change makes the most sense.  Impact, change, scale can take many forms depending on the problem being faced and the best solution(s) for it.  I imagine that as the field of social entrepreneurship continues to evolve other forms and understanding of scale will emerge.

Tags: Hull House, KIPP, Peter Frumkin, scale, Social Entrepreneurship, Teach for America

Education Reform vs. the Social Entrepreneur

Isn’t creating significant change in society what the social sector (nonprofits and the philanthropists who fund them) is all about?  A person starts a nonprofit organization when they recognize some disequilibrium (poverty, homelessness, failing schools) and they have a theory of change that will result in righting that disequilibrium.

I think at times, however, the structures that we create in the social sector get us away from that fundamental goal.  It’s interesting to take a step back and evaluate whether or not activity within the social sector is significantly changing broken systems.

Marc S. Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, in Washington, DC, wrote a thought-provoking and controversial opinion piece at the Chronicle of Philanthropy about how social entrepreneurial programs like Teach for America, Green Dot and KIPP are not really solving the problem of the crumbling American school system.  He argues that these programs, which are beloved by funders and proponents of social entrepreneurship, “don’t have a prayer of dealing with the problem at the scale that is needed.”  It is not the quality of the innovative programs or the ability to get results that he is at odds with.  Rather, it is the lack of scale of these programs.  They just can’t address the entire system:

But as exemplary as they are, small programs like these are not equal to the task. Teach for America accounts for just two-tenths of 1 percent of the new teachers entering our schools every year. The entire enrollment of the Green Dot schools is no larger than the enrollment of one typical high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. KIPP schools, the object of enormous attention in the national news media, has an enrollment equal to three-hundredths of 1 percent of the 92,000 public schools in the United States.

He argues that instead of funding these “handful of small, disruptive interventions” we need to emulate the most successful countries’ educational systems by:

• Recruiting teachers from the top one-third to one-fifth of college graduates by paying them as much as the other professions they could just as easily choose to go into: medicine, law, architecture, accounting, engineering.
• Giving them the same kind of control over the way their services are delivered to their clients as the other professions have over theirs…turning virtually all of the decisions as to how the schools are run over to them.
• Adopting high-quality board examinations like those the most successful countries use, which can measure a student’s grasp of the concepts underlying the subject, the student’s creativity and capacity for innovation, as well as the student’s knowledge and ability to apply what he or she has learned to real-world problems.
• Shifting the school financing system away from a reliance on the local property tax and toward a system that makes sure each and every student has the resources needed to get to internationally benchmarked standards.

He recommends a complete overhaul of the American education system at a cost of $60 billion a year in initial investments.  These costs would eventually be offset by expenses saved.

He argues that to get this kind of systemic change donors to educational programs must “shift their attention from financing cameo programs to putting their money into groups that influence public policy. That’s where the payoff is.”

It is an interesting, bold idea.  I’m not sure, however, that I completely agree.  I think we’ve seen over the past several decades that education policy is broken.  There are so many special interests in the field of education policy, it’s unclear to me where we would pour the money.  Perhaps we needed social entrepreneurs like Teach for America and others to point out the problems within the system and offer a theory of change.  Now that they have demonstrated that there are programs that work and new ways to do things, we can now create policy around those ideas.  And with a new administration and a new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who has a history of reforming the Chicago Public Schools and implementing new models like Teach for America, perhaps policy reform has a chance.  It will be interesting to watch.

Tags: Arne Duncan, Chicago Public Schools, Green Dot, KIPP, Social Entrepreneurship, Teach for America

How to Scale

Continuing my series on defining and exploring key terms in social innovation, I’d like to take a look at scale.  In an earlier post defining social entrepreneurship, I discussed the key part that scale plays:

Absolutely essential to the idea of social entrepreneurship is the idea of scale. A pattern changing idea, by definition, creates a new model. And to do so, it can’t just exist in one school, in one district, in one city. To truly be social entrepreneurship, the new idea must grow to scale, to reach all of those who can benefit from the solution.

However, just as there are various ways a successful business can grow to scale, there are different ways a nonprofit can grow to scale.  There is the franchise model that we see with organizations like Teach for America, Citizen Schools, or College Summit.  These organizations have a successful model with dramatic results that they want to replicate in other areas of the country.  They raise growth capital that will allow them to import the model to other cities and regions; they bring in or recruit a staff and build the new chapter.  This can be a very successful model.

In a session at this month’s annual Net Impact (an organization for socially-minded business school students and alums) conference, panelists had some provocative ideas for how nonprofits scale.  Aaron Hurst, founder of Taproot Foundation, an organization that provides pro-bono marketing, IT, and HR consulting to nonprofits, took the franchise idea even further arguing that there must be great consolidation within the nonprofit sector:

We need to talk about how we get foundations to stop giving inefficiently…the multitude of nonprofits with similar missions…[are like] the hundreds of Chinese restaurants across New York City. All the restaurants serve dumplings, lomein…[to be efficient] they should all be one Panda Express.

I’m not sure that is the answer.  Nathaniel Whittemore, founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University argued in his blog on Change.org that scale for nonprofits needs to be thought of a bit differently.  Because of the social, consensus and local nature of nonprofit organizations, you cannot simply franchise a good idea from one city to the next.  He makes a very necessary distinction between scaling an organization and scaling a solution.  The former forces a model onto the next community, without taking into account local processes, norms, behaviors, beliefs, etc.  The latter approach molds the basic solution to the new area.  He believes the successful model is Jane Addams’ Hull House, one of the first settlement houses offering social services to the poor.

For [Jane]…[scale] meant helping other socially concerned citizens found their own organizations with similar but locally appropriate models. She was far less concerned with franchising and branding the Hull House name, but cared that poor people in every city had access to the same quality of services with dignity that her organization offered.

That’s not to say that organizations like Teach for America, Citizen Schools and others don’t meld their model to be locally appropriate,  but it is still very much a franchise model.  And as you grow that model overhead becomes more expensive, quality assurance standards become harder to enforce, and ultimately, the solution may creep farther away.

The franchise model also necessitates significant growth capital.  For example, College Summit has had to raise tens of millions of dollars in growth capital to expand to 8 states with their current program and 6 additional states with a pilot program.  And growth capital can be very difficult to find.

With a model more like Jane Addams’, scale is less about the organization that brings about the solution and more about the actual solution.  You are not building a nationwide organization with a very specific solution, but rather you are building local organizations that mold the solution to be most successful in their communities.  However, because the latter is less rigid and more decentralized it would be more difficult to ensure the quality and effectiveness of the solution, and perhaps much more difficult to track outcomes.

There is much more to be learned as social entrepreneurs continue to grapple with how best to grow to scale – what that means, and what it looks like.  But it is a very necessary discussion, because the true impact of social entrepreneurship does not lie in the ideas that social entrepreneurs create.  I don’t think we have ever lacked good ideas.  But rather, true solutions come when a great idea can grow to scale and fundamentally alter an old, broken model.  How that scale happens most effectively, however, is yet to be determined.

Tags: Citizen Schools, College Summit, growth capital, scale, Social Entrepreneurship, Teach for America