Social Entrepreneurship & Government: A New Breed of Entrepreneurs Developing Solutions To Social Problems

From The Small Business Economy: A Report to the President, 2007,
by The Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy.
Social
Entrepreneurship
& Government
A New Breed of Entrepreneurs
Developing Solutions to Social Problems
by Andrew M. Wolk
Founder & CEO, Root Cause
MIT Senior Lecturer, Social Entrepreneurship
A Report
Dear Mr. President:
The Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is

pleased to present The Small Business Economy: A Report to the President.* The
American economy is blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit that continues to
be the envy of many nations around the world. Small business leaders provide
new ideas, employ additional workers, and develop innovative products and
services. By investing in their businesses, the small firm owner makes a major
contribution to the local, regional, and national economy.
Over the past year, the Office of Advocacy has conducted research that
documents these points. First, Kathryn Kobe of Economic Consulting Services
reconfirmed our knowledge that small businesses account for half of private,
nonfarm gross domestic product. Second, Donald Bruce, John A. Deskins,
Brian C. Hill, and Jonathon C. Rork find that a state’s ability to generate new
establishments is the most important factor that leads to higher gross state
product, state personal income, and total state employment. Finally, Larry
Plummer, a doctoral student at the University of Colorado at Boulder who
served as a visiting research economist in this office, found that new business
entrants provide long-term benefits to the local economy; the increased com-
petition might be painful in the short term, but with time, collaborative efforts
accrue to everyone’s betterment. These and other studies can be found on the
Office of Advocacy’s research page at http://www.sba.gov/advo/research.
This edition of The Small Business Economy features two chapters on owner
demographics based primarily on the 2002 Survey of Business Owners from
the U.S. Census Bureau. In documenting the number of small businesses
owned by minorities, women, veterans, and service-disabled veterans, we gain
a better understanding of their contributions to the economy.
This report also summarizes the economic and small business financial
climate in 2006, and examines small business procurement. Generally, the
economy and financial markets were supportive of small business growth in
2006. The Office of Advocacy, through its implementation of the Regulatory
Flexibility Act of 1980 and Executive Order 13272, has assisted small busi-
nesses by helping to reduce the regulatory compliance costs of proposed rules.
For instance, in FY 2006, Advocacy’s efforts resulted in cost savings of $7.25
billion in the first year and $117 million annually for small businesses. These
* This letter originally appeared in The Small Business Economy: A Report to the President, 2007, ed. U.S.
Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy (Washington: United States Government Printing Office,
2007): iii–iv. Republished with permission.
ii Social Entrepreneurship and Government

are costs that will not be borne by the small business owners as a result of
changes in the regulations they comply with.
We also feature two chapters from external contributors. Andrew Wolk
of the Root Cause Institute and a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology presents a number of examples of social entrepre-
neurship across the country and outlines steps governments are taking to
promote social entrepreneurs as a mechanism for solving some of our nation’s
problems. Some may ask, “What does social entrepreneurship have to do
with small business?” A short answer might be that social entrepreneurship
exhibits many of the attributes of small business entrepreneurship, serving
as an engine of innovation, job creation, and economic growth. Moreover,
by bringing together aspects of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors
to address a market failure, social entrepreneurs have, in a variety of ways,
helped create an economic environment in which private entrepreneurs and
small businesses can flourish. The longer answer may be to read on and see
how this chapter answers the question. It is an excellent chapter that will
provoke discussion in academic and policymaking circles.
A second chapter from external contributors, by William Gartner of
Clemson University and Jianwen (Jon) Liao of the Illinois Institute of
Technology, discusses the need for pre-venture planning. They find that
nascent business owners who engaged in business planning during the startup
phase and wrote a formal business plan were more likely to open and remain
in business. In essence, they suggest that the process of drafting a business
plan was essential to the overall success of the venture. While that might
seem common sense to many, a debate in recent years has sometimes chal-
lenged the need for pre-venture planning as a prerequisite for success. This
chapter lends credence to those who suggest that planning matters.
In sum, the 26.8 million small businesses in the United States play a vital
role in the economic well-being of our nation. The research of the Office
of Advocacy continues to document the importance of the entrepreneur in
maintaining economic growth, employing workers, bringing new innovations
to the marketplace, and remaining competitive in a global economy.
Chad Moutray
Chief Economist and Director of Economic Research

Social Entrepreneurship and Government iii
About the Author
ANDREW WOLK is the founder and CEO of Root Cause and oversees
the organization’s overall strategic direction. Root Cause builds social
innovators and educates social impact investors to support the lifecycle of
developing enduring solutions to social problems. Andrew has consulted to
dozens of organizations working in the fields of civic engagement, economic
development, education, the environment, seniors, and more. As part of
Root Cause’s knowledge sharing focus, Andrew has co-authored the Root
Cause How-to Guide Business Planning for Enduring Social Impact:
A Social-Entrepreneurial Approach to Solving Social Problems (available at
www.rootcause.org, January 2008). He also founded the two social
enterprises that Root Cause leads: InnerCity Entrepreneurs (ICE)
and the Social Innovation Forum. Andrew is a senior lecturer in social
entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the
Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
iv Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Acknowledgments
This project was managed by Marie Zemler Wu, senior editor, an
independent consultant providing support to government and nonprofit
organizations that seek innovative solutions for assisting children and families
living in poverty. Through research, analysis, and strategic planning, Marie has
helped clients including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Harvard University’s
Innovations in American Government Awards program, Columbia
University’s National Center for Children in Poverty, and New York City’s
Administration for Children and Families.
Special thanks to Kelley Kreitz and Andrea E. McGrath for their editorial and
project management expertise, and to Jackson Shuler for research support.
The author is also grateful to the many people who contributed case studies,
provided interviews, and served as reviewers for this report:
Case Studies
Keith Artin Katherine Freund Jon Schnur

Triangle Residential ITNAmerica New Leaders for New
Options for Substance Schools
Abusers (TROSA) Jim Fruchterman
Benetech Sunny Schwartz
Michael Brown Resolve to Stop the
City Year Darrell Hammond Violence Program
KaBOOM! (RSVP)
Brandon Busteed
Outside the Classroom
Social Entrepreneurship and Government v

Interviews
Susan Cippoletti R. Todd Johnson David Roll

Girl Scouts of the USA Jones Day Lex Mundi Foundation
Cheryl Dorsey Alan Khazei JB Schramm

Echoing Green City Year College Summit
Bill Drayton Marguerite Kondracke Eric Schwartz

Ashoka America’s Promise Citizen Schools
David Eisner Robert Lang Billy Shore

National Corporation Mannweiler Share Our Strength
for Community Service Foundation
Edward Skloot
Chris Gabrieli Paul Light Surdna Foundation
Massachusetts 2020 New York University
Wagner Graduate Kim Syman
Kirsten Gagnaire School of Public Service New Profit
Sustayne, Social
Enterprise Group Nancy McGaw Rich Trubey
Aspen Institute Solar Trade
Stephen Goldsmith Corporation
Harvard University Seth Miller
Kennedy School of California Center for Timothy Zak
Government Regional Leadership Carnegie-Mellon
University Heinz
Lance Henderson Judy Morse School of Public Policy
Skoll Foundation Office of the Louisiana and Management,
Lieutenant Governor Australia
Michael Hill
Environmental Jeffrey Robinson
Protection Agency New York University
Stern School of
Howard Husock Business
Manhattan Institute
vi Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Reviewers
Beth Anderson Milton Little Bill Turenne

Teach for America United Way of ITNAmerica
Massachusetts Bay
Anand Dholakia Rachel Mosher-
Root Cause Consulting Alex Nichols Williams
University of Oxford Aspen Institute
Tony Deifell Saïd Business School
KaBOOM! Julie Zack
Edward Roberts Root Cause
Chris Gergan MIT Sloan School of
New Mountain Management
Ventures
Social Entrepreneurship and Government vii

Social Entrepreneurship and Government:
A New Breed of Entrepreneurs
Developing Solutions to Social Problems
Synopsis
Social entrepreneurship—the practice of responding to market failures with
transformative, financially sustainable innovations aimed at solving social
problems—has emerged at the nexus of the public, private, and nonprofit
sectors.1 It is a new breed of entrepreneurship that exhibits characteristics
of nonprofits, government, and businesses—including applying to social
problem-solving traditional, private-sector entrepreneurship’s focus on
innovation, risk-taking, and large-scale transformation. While social entre-
preneurship is not a new phenomenon, the field has experienced enormous
growth over the past 15 years, receiving increasing recognition from jour-
nalists, philanthropists, researchers, and policymakers as an important and
distinctive part of the nation’s social, economic, and political landscape.
This chapter introduces city, state, and federal government officials to
social entrepreneurship. Given the traditional role of the government in
responding to market failures—and the $1 trillion plus per year of federal
funds dedicated to resolving domestic social problems2—the author argues
that there is a yet-to-be-harnessed opportunity for government leaders and
social entrepreneurs to collaborate to leverage public and private resources and
generate transformative, cost-effective solutions to the most challenging social
problems facing the nation and world. Incorporating insights from experts in
1 This report was published by the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration
as Chapter 6 of The Small Business Economy: A Report to the President, 2007. The views
presented here are those of the authors and not of the U.S. Small Business Administration or
the Office of Advocacy. This report and other Root Cause publications can be accessed through
www.rootcause.org.
2 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Consolidated Federal Funds Report for Fiscal Year 2004. This figure is based
on federal spending in 2004 on direct benefits, service grants and contracts, and government agency staff.
This does not include the additional funds raised and spent at the state and local levels, nor does it include
money spent on foreign assistance.
Social Entrepreneurship and Government 1

the field of social entrepreneurship and case studies examining eight success-
ful social-entrepreneurial initiatives, the chapter answers the following three
questions: (1) What is social entrepreneurship? (2) How does social entre-
preneurship help government benefit Americans? (3) How is government
currently supporting social-entrepreneurial initiatives?
Some may ask, “What does social entrepreneurship have to do with
small business?” A short answer might be that social entrepreneurship
exhibits many of the attributes of small business entrepreneurship, serving
as an engine of innovation, job creation, and economic growth. Moreover,
by bringing together aspects of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors
to address a market failure, social entrepreneurs have, in a variety of ways,
helped create an economic environment in which private entrepreneurs and
small businesses can flourish. The longer answer may be to read on and see
how this chapter answers the question.
Introduction: Social Entrepreneurship Enters

the Public Eye
In his 2007 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush acknowl-
edged an individual who represents an emerging field with a growing sig-
nificance for policymakers. Among his honored guests at the U.S. Capitol
was Julie Aigner-Clark, founder of the profitable children’s video company,
Baby Einstein, and current producer of child safety videos with the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The president praised her by
saying: “Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America. And she is
using her success to help others…we are pleased to welcome this talented
business entrepreneur and generous social entrepreneur.”3
That the president of the United States honored a “social entrepreneur”
in his State of the Union address exemplifies the growing recognition that
social entrepreneurship—the practice of responding to market failures with
transformative, financially sustainable innovations aimed at solving social
3 Bush, State of the Union 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070123-2.html.
2 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

problems4—has received in recent years. The field constitutes a new breed
of entrepreneurship that exhibits characteristics of nonprofits, government,
and businesses—including applying to social problem solving traditional,
private-sector entrepreneurship’s focus on innovation, risk-taking, and large-
scale transformation.5 This new movement has come into the limelight in a
number of ways in recent years:
In 2006, Teach For America Founder Wendy Kopp and City Year
Co-Founders Michael Brown and Alan Khazei were profiled among U.S.
News and World Report’s Top 25 Leaders. Muhammad Yunus and his organi-
zation, the Grameen Bank, were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Victoria Hale
of the Institute for OneWorld Health and Jim Fruchterman of Benetech
received “genius awards” from the MacArthur Foundation. All identify
themselves as social entrepreneurs.6
In 2005, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and the Skoll Foundation
created and aired a two-part miniseries profiling The New Heroes, 14 social
entrepreneurs from around the globe. They followed the series with a three-
year grant program encouraging filmmakers, documentary filmmakers, and
journalists to “produce work that promotes large-scale public awareness of
social entrepreneurship.”7
For the past six years, the World Economic Forum, which annually
brings together business, government, and national leaders who are “commit-
ted to improving the state of the world,” has hosted a Social Entrepreneurs’
Summit. In partnership with the Schwab Foundation, the forum convenes
4 This working definition of social entrepreneurship will be discussed in more detail and illustrated with
examples, in the sections that follow. Market failure occurs when the cost of a good or service is higher
than the price that individuals are willing or able to pay, yet the social benefits from that good or service
make its availability worthwhile for maintaining a healthy, productive society, (Gruber, Public Finance and
Public Policy).
5 Early twentieth-century economist Joseph Schumpeter is largely responsible for this conception of en-
trepreneurship. He argued that, “the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of
production by exploiting an invention,” (Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development). For a detailed
discussion of the history of entrepreneurship and its relationship to social entrepreneurship, see Dees, “The
Meaning of ‘Social Entrepreneurship.’”
6 This article uses the term “social entrepreneur” to mean a person or small group of individuals who founds
and/or leads an organization or initiative engaged in social entrepreneurship. While those cited here iden-
tify themselves as social entrepreneurs, the term is applied throughout the article to any individual who fits
this definition regardless of whether they would use it to characterize themselves. Social entrepreneurs are
also sometimes called “public entrepreneurs,” “civic entrepreneurs,” or “social innovators.”
7 Skoll Foundation, “PBS Foundation and Skoll Foundation Establish Fund to Produce Unique
Programming About Social Entrepreneurship,” http://www.skollfoundation.org/media/press_releases/
internal/092006.asp.

social entrepreneurs as one of its special-interest communities, placing social
entrepreneurship on par with only nine other interest groups, including
global growth companies, international media, and labor leaders.8
Popular media have brought the term social entrepreneurship greater
household recognition. The New York Times, The Economist, and the Harvard
Business Review have all printed stories focused on social entrepreneurship.9
As social entrepreneurship is rapidly finding its way into the vocabu-
lary of policymakers, journalists, academics, and the general public, the
United States is facing incredible societal challenges and needs. One in eight
Americans, including one in four African Americans, lives in poverty.10 One-
quarter of adults fail to finish high school, creating a national graduation rate
that lags 8 percent behind rates in the European Union.11 Despite the highest
per capita spending on health care,12 the U.S. health system is ranked number
37 in the world—lower than any other developed nation.13 On any given day,
one out of every 108 American men is incarcerated.14
The boom of the field of social entrepreneurship, and its promise as a
means of addressing the daunting social problems that America currently
faces, are of particular importance for policymakers. By far, the largest
sources of services and funding to help solve these problems are federal, state,
and local governments. In the domestic budget alone, the federal government
spends more than $1 trillion each year providing direct benefits to constitu-
ents, awarding service grants and contracts, and employing government
agency staff.15 State and local governments raise and spend their own funds
to benefit their constituents—creating an even larger pool of governmental
spending and activities to solve social problems.
8 Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Summit Report, http://schwabfound.org/the.

htm?p=102.
9 Finder, “A Subject for Those Who Want to Make a Difference,” New York Times; Bishop, “The Rise of
the Social Entrepreneur,” The Economist, 11-13; and Dees, “Enterprising Nonprofits,” Harvard Business
Review, 54-67.
10 DeNavas-Walt et al., Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance, 13.
11 Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Education at a Glance.
12 California HealthCare Foundation, Snapshot: Health Care Costs 101.
13 World Health Organization, “The World Health Organization Assesses the World’s Health Systems,”
http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/index.html.
14 Harrison and Beck, Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, 4
15 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Consolidated Federal Funds Report, 5.

Government funding dwarfs the amount spent by the nation’s largest
foundations, which together donate $16.4 billion annually to nonprofits,16
as well as the giving by individuals, who donate $163.5 billion each year to
social causes.17 Of the nation’s 144 largest and fastest-growing nonprofits—
all of which have $50 million or more in annual revenue—more than 40
percent rely on government as their primary funding source. The next most
common funding comes from service fees, which are paid at least in part by
government agencies in 90 percent of cases.18
Given both the magnitude of needs and the scope of spending, govern-
ment leaders constantly face tough decisions about how to improve the
lives of their constituents while most effectively using tax dollars. As elected
officials and government agency staff approach these tough choices, social
entrepreneurs offer a new source of assistance. Government leaders and social
entrepreneurs share an interest in identifying efficient, effective, and sus-
tainable ways to solve difficult social problems. Despite this common goal,
however, little has been published by scholars and researchers to date on the
relationship between the two.
Attempting to fill this gap, this chapter provides an introduction to social
entrepreneurship for city, state, and federal government officials. Based on
case studies and interviews with experts, it breaks new ground in exploring
the ways in which government leaders and ultimately their constituents are
benefiting from social entrepreneurs’ efforts. The author suggests that recent
trends affecting business, nonprofits, and government have been instrumen-
tal in the emergence of social entrepreneurship as a new field. Collaboration
between government leaders and social entrepreneurs is already occurring and
generating numerous benefits for American society.
Although collaboration thus far between social entrepreneurs and govern-
ment has occurred in isolated incidents, working together more strategically
represents a yet-to-be-harnessed opportunity for government leaders work-
ing to resolve social problems. By adapting some of the same levers that have
16 Foundation Center, Foundation Giving Trends, 2. This figure includes grants of $10,000 or more, made
by the nation’s 1,154 largest foundations during calendar year 2005. Research has shown this type of
calculation generally represents half of all foundation giving, if smaller grants and/or foundations were to
be included.
17 John. J. Havens et al., “Charitable Giving,” 542. Data given in 2004 and adjusted by the researchers for
inflation to 2002 dollars.
18 Fine and Foster, “How Nonprofits Get Really Big,” 46–55.

successfully encouraged U.S. entrepreneurialism, government leaders have a
similar opportunity to support social entrepreneurship—and thereby gener-
ate transformative, financially sustainable solutions to social problems facing
the nation. As Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg state in a recent article for
the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Social entrepreneurship, we believe,
is as vital to the progress of societies as is entrepreneurship to the progress of
economies, and it merits more rigorous, serious attention than it has attracted
so far.”19 Just as government support of private markets and entrepreneurship
has fueled growth in the U.S. economy, so too can government’s support of
social entrepreneurship accelerate the solving of social problems.
To introduce social entrepreneurship to government and explore the
relationship between social entrepreneurship and government, this chapter
addresses three key questions:
What is social entrepreneurship? In the first section, the author outlines key
trends that have pushed the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to blur their
traditional economic and social roles, and show how social entrepreneurship
has emerged at the nexus of these sectors. The author lays out his definition
of social entrepreneurship in detail, using cases that highlight three successful
social-entrepreneurial initiatives.
How does social entrepreneurship help government benefit Americans? The
second section discusses how social entrepreneurship can help government
benefit American society, as the field is uniquely situated to help improve
the lives of public officials’ constituents. Case examples show how social
entrepreneurs leverage public and private resources, and test and develop new
solutions to social problems.
How is government supporting social-entrepreneurial initiatives? Although
government’s efforts do not yet represent a coordinated, strategic approach
to supporting social entrepreneurship, local, state, and federal government
officials nonetheless have had significant impacts on every initiative consid-
ered in the development of this chapter. In this section, the author looks at
methods used by government agencies and elected officials to (1) encourage
social entrepreneurs to innovate, (2) create enabling environments for their
efforts, (3) reward their performance, (4) help scale their successes, and (5)
produce knowledge to help them solve social problems.
19 Martin and Osberg, “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition,” 35.

Three research methods are used to answer the three guiding questions:
literature review, consultations with experts, and interviews with leading
social entrepreneurs. The author reviewed a variety of academic and popular
sources in the fields of social entrepreneurship, nonprofit and business man-
agement, public policy, and entrepreneurship, and consulted with leading
experts, who were selected based on their reputation and scholarship in social
entrepreneurship and related areas from academia, philanthropy, business,
nonprofit management, and government.20 Lastly, the author conducted
interviews and developed case studies on eight successful examples of social
entrepreneurship that are working within each of the three traditional sec-
tors, targeting a variety of social problems, and representing a variety of
geographic areas.21 The eight examples are Benetech, City Year, ITNAmerica,
KaBOOM!, New Leaders for New Schools (New Leaders), Outside the
Classroom, Resolve to Stop the Violence Program (RSVP), and Triangle
Resident Options for Substance Abusers, Inc. (TROSA).
What is Social Entrepreneurship?

History abounds with examples of individuals who could be considered
social entrepreneurs. Florence Nightingale, whose work in the mid- to
late 1800s is regarded as the foundation of the modern field of nursing,
and Horace Mann, who greatly reformed public education earlier in the
same century, are often cited as historic examples of social innovators
who changed America’s social landscape.22 Yet social entrepreneurship as
a distinctive part of American social and economic life is a more recent
development that can only be understood within the context of the changes
that have taken place since the 1980s in the roles played by businesses,
government, and nonprofits. This section will introduce social entrepre-
neurship within that context, providing an overview of the roles of the
three sectors—public, private, and voluntary; a description of trends that
have increasingly blurred the boundaries between these sectors, creating a
20 Many of these conversations took place at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, held at
Oxford University in March 2007, and at New York University’s Annual Conference of Social Entrepre-
neurs, held in April 2007.
21 To be included, each organization must have been an example of social entrepreneurship as defined in
this chapter; regarded by others in the field as successful, sufficiently mature in its organizational develop-
ment to demonstrate results, and based in the United States.
22 Bornstein, How to Change the World.

space for social entrepreneurship to emerge; and a detailed discussion of the
authors’ definition of social entrepreneurship in the context of this blending
of sectors, using case examples to illustrate.
Early threads of what would become the field of social entrepreneurship
emerged in the United States just over two decades ago,23 and the various
names it has gone by throughout its early development help to illustrate its
connection to all three sectors. In 1980, Edward Skloot founded a consulting
firm to help nonprofit organizations interested in creating business ven-
tures, which promptly became a pioneering institution of the field. His 1983
Harvard Business Review article coined the term “nonprofit entrepreneur-
ship” to describe the use of business ventures as a method for diversifying
nonprofit organizations’ funding streams.24 In 1981, private-sector consultant
Bill Drayton founded Ashoka: Innovators for the Public to seek, support,
and publicize individuals he originally called “public entrepreneurs,” and later
named “social entrepreneurs.”25 Management expert Peter Drucker’s 1985
book Innovation and Entrepreneurship was among the first to describe entre-
preneurship as a phenomenon that extended into multiple sectors—and was
not limited to profit-seeking enterprises.26
The term social entrepreneurship began to appear routinely both in
the scholarly and popular presses in the early to mid-1990s. Early descrip-
tions of social entrepreneurs ranged from “anyone who starts a not-for-
profit” to “not-for-profit organizations starting for-profit or earned-income
ventures”27 to “business owners who integrate social responsibility into their
operations.”28 While debate on the exact definition continues to this day,
most definitions describe social entrepreneurship broadly enough to include a
variety of organizational structures and activities, and yet narrowly enough to
recognize social entrepreneurship as a distinct field. Much of the difficulty of
settling on the details, it is argued here, stems from the fact that social-entre-
preneurial initiatives tend to exhibit characteristics of each of the private,
23 For a more detailed history, see Dees and Anderson, “Framing a Theory of Social Entrepreneurship.”
24 Skloot, “Should Not-for-Profits Go into Business?”
25 Anderson and J Dees, “Rhetoric, Reality, and Research,” 39–66.
26 Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
27 Earned-income ventures are traditional for-profit businesses run within a nonprofit organization to
help cover operational costs.
28 Dees, “The Meaning of ‘Social Entrepreneurship,” 1. All definitions listed in this sentence come from
this article.

public, and nonprofit sectors, without fitting neatly into any one of them. As
examples throughout this chapter will show, social-entrepreneurial initia-
tives can take the form of nonprofits, for-profits, or governmental programs.
Unlike traditional nonprofits, businesses, or government programs, however,
such social-entrepreneurial initiatives will always exhibit characteristics of
each of the sectors.
For this reason, understanding the ways in which the three sectors are
well- and ill-suited to meeting America’s social and economic needs provides
the context, indeed describes the fertile opportunity, from which social entre-
preneurship has emerged. As illustrated in Figure 6.1, each of these sectors
has traditionally carried out specific roles and responsibilities, making vital
contributions to the United States’ economic and social health.
The Private Sector

The private sector is defined here as all the corporations, small businesses,
and entrepreneurs utilizing markets to exchange goods and services to
maximize profit, while driving increased innovation and productivity in the
economy. Economists have long identified innovation as one of the private
sector’s defining characteristics. Writing in the mid-1900s, famed scholar
Joseph Schumpeter commented, “entrepreneurial innovation is the essence of
capitalism.”29 Further, contemporary economist Milton Friedman has argued
that free markets, competition, and consumer choices are also essential com-
ponents of capitalism.30
The private sector is by far the largest sector of the U.S. economy. The
United States attains a gross domestic product of approximately $13 tril-
lion a year.31 Private-sector activity has created a national income more than
twice that of Japan, the next largest national economy in the world.32 U.S.
citizens enjoy the third highest per capita purchasing power—or standard of
living—in the world.33 Among the more than 150 million adults in the U.S.
29 Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development.

30 Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.
31 Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2006, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/print/us.html.
32 World Bank, World Development Indicators 2006, http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/
cover.htm.
33 Ibid.

Figure 6.1 The Three Sectors’ Traditional Economic
and Social Responsibilities
Private Sector/Businesses
Utilize markets to exchange
goods and services for profit;
drive productivity and innovation
• World’s largest economy–
$13 trillion GDP
• More than 115 million
employees
Public Sector/Government Voluntary Sector/Nonprofits

Respond to market failures by Engage individuals in action to
providing public goods and ser- achieve social impact
vices or through redistribution • 1.4 million organizations
• 87,900 units of government • $1.4 billion in revenue
• $4.3 trillion in revenue • 9.4 million employees
• 18 million employees
work force,34 less than 5 percent are unemployed,35 with the vast majority of
jobs provided by private sector businesses.
While the private sector contributes to the well-being of citizens by
developing and distributing products and services, meeting consumers’ needs,
creating jobs, driving innovation, and building wealth for the nation, it is
often ill-suited to addressing social problems. Focusing on societal challenges
has typically been left to the government and nonprofit sectors.
The Public Sector

Public-finance theory tends to assign two major roles to government: 1) pro-
viding public goods, such as libraries, public education, national defense, and
34 Ibid.
35 U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.
nr0.htm.

policing; and 2) addressing inequalities produced by markets through redistri-
bution—in the form of unemployment benefits, disaster assistance, or benefits
to families living in poverty, to name a few of the most common methods.36
It is possible to elaborate on these two roles by thinking in terms of mar-
ket failure, which occurs when the private sector alone cannot meet a societal
need because the cost of providing the needed good or service is more than
its beneficiaries are able or willing to pay. Public goods such as public schools
and libraries are classic examples of services that address market failures.
Since such services do not provide the profits that would make them viable
private-sector enterprises, the private sector leaves the need to educate the
population unmet. Redistribution, which involves giving support to those not
served by private markets, is another way in which government’s role can be
considered to be addressing market failures. By providing public goods and
addressing inequalities in markets, then, government complements the pri-
vate sector, filling in gaps left by market failures, while providing the struc-
ture and stability that allows the private sector and markets to work.
While much smaller than the private sector, the public sector nonethe-
less occupies a sizable part of the U.S. economy. According to the 2002
Census of Governments, 87,900 distinct government units operate across
the nation: they include the federal government, 50 state governments, 3,034
county governments, and 35,937 municipal and township governments, as
well as 48,878 “special purpose” local governments, such as school districts.37
In 2006, federal government revenues were approximately $2.4 trillion per
year,38 while state and local governments generated approximately $1.9 tril-
lion of revenue annually.39 In the same time frame, government at all levels
employs approximately 18 million full-time civilian workers.40
Despite its size and role, government faces tough choices in allocating
its resources to meeting ever-evolving societal needs, and is often ill-suited
to meet all those needs. It therefore often seeks the partnership and support
36 Gruber, Public Finance and Public Policy.

37 U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002 Census of Governments, 1.
38 U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2006 Financial Report, 11.
39 U.S. Bureau of the Census, State and Local Government Finances, http://www.census.gov/govs/www/
state05.html.
40 U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002 Census of Governments, 13.

of citizens, who tend to organize their efforts within the nonprofit/voluntary
and private sector.
The Nonprofit/Voluntary Sector41

The nonprofit sector’s traditional role is to engage individuals in action to
achieve social goals. Typical examples include neighborhood associations,
religious organizations, private hospitals and schools, and social service
providers. The organizations and activities that constitute the nonprofit sector
generally differ from the work of the public and private sectors in two ways.
First, the nonprofit sector often acts when both the public and private sectors
are unable to meet a particular social need.42 Second, while nonprofit-sector
organizations are private and self-governing, much like organizations in the
private sector, nonprofit-sector organizations cannot distribute profits to
their leaders, and must use their revenues and profits to sustain and grow
their organizations.
While the nonprofit sector is by far the smallest of the sectors, it is also the
fastest growing. Over the past 25 years, the total number of nonprofit orga-
nizations has approximately doubled.43 Since 1994, the number of 501(c)(3)
groups in the United States expanded from just over half a million to nearly
850,000, for a growth rate of almost 65 percent.44 According to a study by
the Nonprofit Employment Data Project at Johns Hopkins University, the
nonprofit work force now makes up 10.5 percent of U.S. jobs. Between 2002
and 2004, nonprofit job growth outpaced that of the private sector in 46 out
of 50 states, generating 5.3 percent more new jobs.45 Currently, approxi-
mately 1.4 million tax-exempt organizations are registered with the Internal
Revenue Service (IRS).46 Nonprofit organizations generate nearly $1.4 billion
of revenue annually, hold $3 trillion in assets, account for 5.2 percent of gross
41 Today, the terms “nonprofit sector” and “voluntary sector” are often used interchangeably, despite the
continued existence of many voluntary groups that never formally organize to obtain nonprofit status. The
term “nonprofit sector” is used throughout this chapter.
42 Weisbrod, “The Future of the Nonprofit Sector,” 542.
43 Independent Sector, Facts and Figures About Charitable Organizations 2007, 2.
44 Urban Institute, “The Nonprofit Sector in Brief: Facts and Figures from the Nonprofit Almanac 2007,” 3.
45 Johns Hopkins University, “Employment in U.S. Nonprofits Outpaces Overall Job Growth,” http://
www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home06/dec06/employ.html.
46 Urban Institute, The Nonprofit Sector in Brief, 1.

domestic product (GDP), provide 8.3 percent of wages and salaries paid in
the United States,47 and employ 9.4 million individuals.48
Tax deductions as incentives for charitable contributions have played
a significant role in the growth and financing of the nonprofit sector. Yet,
while the nonprofit sector has grown substantially in the past two decades
and has been instrumental in meeting societal needs, its impact on a
national scale is still limited by its ability to sustain or scale initiatives. For
future growth, it must rely on the much larger public and private sectors for
financial resources and access to the channels that make scaling nonprofit
solutions possible.
Blurring Sectors: Trends Creating Fertile Ground for Social

Entrepreneurship to Emerge
Traditionally, each of the three sectors has maintained the distinct roles and
approaches described above—with the private sector focused on profitable
markets, the public sector solving market failures, and the nonprofit sec-
tor engaging citizens in meeting societal needs. Since the 1980s, however,
several trends have reduced these distinctions, increasingly blurring the social
and economic roles that businesses, government agencies, and nonprofits are
playing. As Figure 6.2 illustrates, these trends have expanded the overlapping
space between the sectors and created ample opportunity for social entrepre-
neurship to emerge and grow. As a result, social entrepreneurship exhibits
characteristics of all three sectors.
In the private sector, businesses and their employees are increasingly
engaging in activities that previously fell under the domain of nonprofits and
government. For instance, private-sector companies have begun compet-
ing in fields such as education and social services, giving such companies
opportunities to provide services that were once considered core government
activities.49 In fact, the number of private-sector contractors paid through
federal funds increased by 700,000 from 1999 to 2002—from 4.45 million to
47 Urban Institute, The Nonprofit Sector in Brief, 2-3: Note that these figures are inclusive only of the
approximately half a million nonprofit organizations reporting to the IRS in 2004, a requirement for any
with more than $25,000 in gross receipts.
48 Salamon and Sokolowski, Employment in America’s Charities, 3.
49 Salamon, The Resilient Sector: The State of Nonprofits in America; and Weerawardena and Mort, “Investi-
gating social entrepreneurship,” 21–45.

Figure 6.2 Trends Pushing the Three Sectors to Blur Traditional Roles:
Social Entrepreneurship Emerges in the Growing Intersection
ctor/Busine
va te Se sse
P ri s
Opportunities to provide public

services through private organizations
Call for business ethics
Public-private Corporate social

partnerships responsibility
Competitive Earned-income
sourcing ventures
Vo
en t
Social
lun
r/Governm
entrepreneurship
tary Sector/No
Demands for efficiency Demands for
accountability
Preferences for choice Third-party
Secto
and competition Demands for

government
sustainability
Reliance on business
n
blic
and nonprofit service Gaps in public
prof
providers service delivery
Pu
its
5.15 million people.50 In another trend, following recent corporate scandals

and financial crises, the private sector has faced new calls for business eth-
ics.51 These have led the private sector to begin to consider the role it plays in
society beyond maximizing profits.
The public sector, too, has seen a shift in its practices. As Reinventing
Government authors David Osborne and Ted Gaebler describe, government
is increasingly steering rather than rowing and emphasizing cost-effective
50 Light, Fact Sheet on the New True Size of Government, 4.

51 Lyndenberg, Corporations and the Public Interest.

results over bureaucratic rules.52 According to Stephen Goldsmith, Daniel
Paul professor of government, and director, Innovations in American
Government Awards Program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy
School of Government, “New Deal-style initiatives, in which government
assumes the dominant service-delivery role, have become increasingly rare,
especially for newly developed programs.”53 At the federal level, the past three
administrations have “devolved”54 and “reinvented”55 government, pushing for
“citizen-centered, results-oriented, market-based” approaches, respectively.56
At state and local levels, limited budgets and persistent social needs have also
increased demands for efficiency in the use of government funds.57 Many
constituents, accustomed to their choices in the marketplace, want to be
thought of as consumers and express preferences for choice and competition
on issues ranging from public utilities to public schools. In response, govern-
ment agencies are ceasing to work as monopolies, and instead are relying on
nonprofit and private service providers that are managed through contracts
and the allocation of grant funds.58
For the nonprofit sector, pressures are growing to fill gaps in public ser-
vice delivery, ensuring that citizens can get the services they need even when
government is unwilling or unable to provide it. If they are to provide essen-
tial services, nonprofit leaders are striving for sustainability to ensure that
they will continue to be able to meet the needs of the populations they serve.
Following the national scandal at a major nonprofit in 1992, and as many
foundations adopt outcomes-driven approaches to funding, nonprofits also
face demands for accountability.
As each sector has entered the territory of the others, the blurring
between them has given rise to a host of new phenomena, which Stephen
Goldsmith characterizes as: “the reality of a world in which the public and
private boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred and governments of
52 Osborne and Gaebler, Reinventing Government, chapter 1.

53 Goldsmith (professor, Harvard University), interview with the author, April 24, 2007.
54 Hall, Inventing the Nonprofit Sector.
55 National Partnership on Reinventing Government, archived Web site, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/
npr/index.htm.
56 Executive Office of the President, The President’s Management Agenda, Fiscal Year 2002, 6.
57 Osborne and Gaebler, Reinventing Government.
58 Salamon, ed., Beyond Privatization: The Tools of Government Action.

all ideological bents are partnering with private companies and nonprofit
organizations to do more and more of the government’s work.”59 An increase
in public-private partnerships has involved more and more businesses and
nonprofits as collaborators in government projects. Further, President Bush’s
competitive sourcing initiative, which is currently being implemented, is
slated to open half of the federal jobs that are “not inherently governmen-
tal” to market competition.60 At the same time, the increased popularity of
earned-income ventures has led many nonprofits to develop business-like
ventures to generate revenues.61 Lastly, corporate social responsibility move-
ments have entered the mainstream, motivating businesses to account for
their community, environmental, and labor practices along with their profits.
Whether to improve their images, gain marketing advantages, or altruistically
benefit society, corporations have demonstrated a growing interest in volun-
teer and philanthropic opportunities.
Social Entrepreneurship Emerges at the Nexus

As trends have pushed the traditional roles of the three sectors to blur, their
nexus has provided fertile ground for the growth of social entrepreneurship.
As scholar Alex Nicholls from Oxford University’s Skoll Centre for Social
Entrepreneurship explains, social entrepreneurship is not defined by its orga-
nizational form but “is best understood as a multi-dimensional and dynamic
construct moving across various intersection points between the public, pri-
vate, and social sectors.”62
By blending some of the social and economic responsibilities tradition-
ally associated with each of the three sectors, social entrepreneurship may
take the form of a nonprofit, business, or government initiative. No mat-
ter what organizational form it takes, social entrepreneurship also tends to
exhibit characteristics of all three. Like business, social entrepreneurship
utilizes markets to drive innovation and productivity. Like government,
social entrepreneurship responds to market failures by providing public goods
and services. Like nonprofits, social entrepreneurship engages individuals
in action to achieve social goals. As Nicholls concludes, “The organizational
59 Goldsmith and Eggers, Governing by Network, 23.

60 Light, An Update on the Bush Administration’s Competitive Sourcing Initiative, 2.
61 Aspen Institute, The Nonprofit Sector and the Market, 6.
62 Nicholls, Social Entrepreneurship, 12.

mechanisms employed are largely irrelevant: social entrepreneurs work in the
public, private, and social sectors alike, employing for-profit, not-for-profit,
and hybrid organizational forms (or a mix of all three) to deliver social value
and bring about change.”63 Returning to the definition, social entrepreneur-
ship, then, is the practice of responding to market failures with transformative,
financially sustainable innovations aimed at solving social problems.
This section discusses in detail the three essential components of this defi-
nition—1) response to market failures, 2) transformative innovations, and 3)
financial sustainability—and offers three case studies that illustrate how social
entrepreneurship exhibits these components.
Response to Market Failures

The social problems that social entrepreneurs address result from mar-
ket failures—in which profitable markets are unavailable, insufficient, or
underdeveloped and where the potential monetary gains for responding to a
societal problem are less than the overall, society-wide positive impact of that
response. Because of the lack of opportunity to generate profit, private-sector
entrepreneurs—who succeed by finding market opportunities and maximiz-
ing profits—often leave these needs unaddressed. Traditionally, government
responds in such cases by deploying public funds to address the unmet needs.
Social entrepreneurship presents another option for addressing market
failures—which can be considered the sources of the opportunities that social
entrepreneurs act on.64 Like private-sector entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs
seek opportunities to create value—but the value they pursue is social rather
than purely economic. As Gregory Dees, a founding scholar of the field of
social entrepreneurship, explains, “Markets do not do a good job of valuing
social improvements, public goods and harms, and benefits for people who
cannot afford to pay. These elements are often essential to social entrepre-
neurship. That is what makes it social entrepreneurship.”65 Roger L. Martin
and Sally Osberg echo this idea that social entrepreneurs can be considered
entrepreneurs who pursue social value: “Unlike the entrepreneurial value
proposition that assumes a market that can pay for the innovation, and may
63 Ibid.
64 Phills and Denend, Social Entrepreneurs: Correcting Market Failures (A) and (B), 2.
65 Dees, “The Meaning of ‘Social Entrepreneurship,’” 3.

Figure 6.3. Market-Failure Continuum of Social-Entrepreneurial
Approaches to Solving Social Problems
No Market Limited Market Low-profit Market
even provide substantial upside for investors, the social entrepreneur’s value
proposition targets an underserved, neglected, or highly disadvantaged popu-
lation that lacks the financial means or political clout to achieve the transfor-
mative benefit on its own.”66
Through interviews with leading social entrepreneurs and conversa-
tions with experts in the field, the author has identified three different types
of approaches that social entrepreneurs take in targeting beneficiaries and
responding to market failures (Figure 6.3).
No Market
In a no-market approach to solving a social problem, the beneficiaries of
the potential product or service will not be able to pay for it.67 As a result, a
social entrepreneur who selects such an approach cannot rely on any earned
revenues from the beneficiary to sustain the initiative. Most commonly,
no-market approaches take the form of government initiatives or nonprofit
organizations.
Limited Market
In a limited-market approach, the beneficiaries or clients have some ability to
pay. As a result, a social entrepreneur who selects such an approach can rely
on some earned revenues from the beneficiary to sustain the initiative. Most
commonly, limited-market approaches tend to be nonprofit organizations.
Low-profit Market
In a low-profit-market approach, the beneficiary has the potential to pay the
full cost while solving the social problem and thus has the potential to gener-
ate a profit. However, the market may be underdeveloped, or investments in
this market may yield returns that are less than typical for for-profit ventures.
Examples of this type of approach exist in both the nonprofit and private
66 Martin and Osberg, “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition,” 35.
67 Seelos and Mair, “Social Entrepreneurship,” 241–246.

sectors. In some cases, low-profit-market approaches eventually develop the
market for a product or service enough that they become traditional for-
profit enterprises.
Transformative Innovations
Ashoka Founder Bill Drayton has famously commented that “social entre-
preneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not
rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”68 Like other entre-
preneurs, social entrepreneurs are creative thinkers, continuously striving for
innovation, which can involve new technologies, supply sources, distribution
outlets, or methods of production.69 Innovation may also mean starting new
organizations, or offering new products or services.70 Innovative ideas can be
completely new inventions or creative adaptations of existing ones.71
Many scholars take this focus on innovation even further. Social entre-
preneurs are “change agents,”72 creating “large-scale change through pattern-
breaking ideas,”73 “addressing the root causes” of social problems,74 possessing
“the ambition to create systemic change by introducing a new idea and per-
suading others to adopt it,”75 and changing “the social systems that create and
maintain” problems.76 These types of transformative changes can be national
or global. They can also often be highly localized—but no less powerful—in
their impact. Most often, social entrepreneurs who create transformative
changes combine innovative practices, deep and targeted knowledge of their
social issue area, applied and cutting-edge research, and political savvy to
reach their goals. For all entrepreneurs, whether in the business or social
realm, innovation is not a one-time event—but continues over time.
68 Ashoka, “What is a Social Entrepreneur?” http://ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur.

69 Dees, “The Meaning of ‘Social Entrepreneurship,’” http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/case/docu-
ments/dees_sedef.pdf.
70 Mair and Marti, “Social Entrepreneurship Research,” 36–44; Peredo and McLean, “Social Entrepre-
neurship: A Critical Review of the Concept,” 56–65; and Dees, “The Meaning of ‘Social Entrepreneur-
ship,’” http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/case/documents/dees_sedef.pdf.
71 Peredo and McLean, “Social Entrepreneurship: A Critical Review of the Concept,” 56–65.
72 Ashoka, “What is a Social Entrepreneur?” http://ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur.
73 Light, “Searching for Social Entrepreneurs,” 30.
74 Dees and Anderson, “Framing a Theory of Social Entrepreneurship,” 46.
75 Kramer, Measuring Innovation, 5.
76 Alvord et al., “Social Entrepreneurship and Societal Transformation,” 260–282.

Of course, while addressing a social problem with a potentially trans-
formative innovation is an essential component of the definition of social
entrepreneurship offered here, succeeding in generating such transformation
is not. The field, like any other, includes success stories and strong leaders, as
well as those who fall short of their aspirations.77 Nonetheless, the definition
of social entrepreneurship requires that initiatives at least have the potential
for transformative social innovation on a local, national, or global scale. This
characteristic distinguishes social entrepreneurship from other nonprofit,
business, or government service providers that may be more narrowly focused
on meeting the most pressing social needs as they emerge.
Financial Sustainability
While social entrepreneurship is not defined by any one standard model for
achieving financial sustainability, working toward financial sustainability is
essential if an approach to a social problem caused by market failure is to be
successful enough to have transformative potential. Each organization must
find a model responsive to the unique character of the social problem they
are trying to solve, and grounded in the realities of the type of approach to
market failure they have adopted. In addition, social entrepreneurs also tend
to prefer business-like productivity and efficiency measures to determine their
capture and use of resources. Many produce cost-benefit analyses, reports on
“social” return on investment, report cards on organizational performance,
or other integrated measures of financial and programmatic success that will
ultimately help the organization optimize their use of resources and maxi-
mize their results.
While the details vary, such financial models generally include two com-
ponents: nonfinancial resources and predictable revenue sources.
Nonfinancial resources
Nonfinancial resources are skilled or unskilled volunteers, and one-time or
recurring in-kind donations that enable social entrepreneurs to increase the
sustainability of their initiatives.78 For instance, David Eisner, CEO of the
Corporation for National and Community Service, points out that “Engaging
the public in developing and implementing social solutions is a proven and
77 Peredo and McLean, “Social Entrepreneurship: A Critical Review of the Concept,” 59; and Light,
“Reshaping Social Entrepreneurship,” 46–51.
78 Bhawe et al., “The Entrepreneurship of the Good Samaritan,” http://ssrn.com/abstract=902685.

inexpensive strategy. Look at the way nearly 600,000 volunteers were lever-
aged to complete intensely needed work in the year after Hurricane Katrina
in a way we never could have paid for.”79
Predictable revenue sources

Predictable revenue sources are long-term, repeat, and performance-based
funding sources—foundation, individual, government, corporate, and fee-
based—that will provide predictable funding, despite conditions of market
failure. Which type of predictable revenue sources a financial sustainability
model contains will depend on the organization’s approach to market failure,
as well as the social problem being addressed. No-market approaches will
look for long-term, repeat, and performance-based funding sources, and may
also develop an earned-income venture to build into the model an alternative
to receiving income from the direct beneficiary. Limited-market approaches
will focus on the same funding sources as no-market approaches, in addition
to collecting a portion of their costs from the beneficiaries of their product
or service. Low-profit-market approaches will ask the beneficiary to pay, and
look for “patient capital” from socially motivated investors who are willing to
accept below-market returns, or wait for profits while the market is devel-
oped, in exchange for social impact.
Table 6.1 provides a summary of how the three components of social entre-
preneurship appear in each of the three major approaches to market failure.
Case Studies of Social-Entrepreneurial Approaches to Solving

Social Problems
Resolve to Stop the Violence Program (RSVP):

A No-Market Approach to Reducing Recidivism
Market Failure
The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
According to a 2005 BBC report, U.S. recidivism rates are also high—at
about 60 percent throughout the nation.80 While reducing these rates would
produce significant societal benefits in terms of reducing the overall prison
79 David Eisner (CEO, Corporation for National and Community Service), interview with the author,
April 30, 2007.
80 Wikipedia, “Recidivism,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recidivism.

Table 6.1 Social-entrepreneurial Approaches to Solving Social Problems
Approach to No market Limited market Low-profit market
market failure
Target beneficiaries Target beneficiaries are Target beneficiaries are
are unable or willing and able to pay willing and able to pay if
unwilling to pay. partial costs. markets are developed.
Innovation Innovation occurs in a variety of forms throughout the market-failure continuum,
including starting new organizations; offering new products or services; and
developing new or adaptive technologies, supply sources, financing methods,
distribution outlets, or methods of production.
Strategies for Full subsidy Partial subsidy Patient or below-market
financial sustainability investment
Makes use of Makes use of nonfinancial
nonfinancial resources: skilled or Often makes use of
resources: skilled or unskilled volunteers and nonfinancial resources:
unskilled volunteers one-time or recurring in- skilled or unskilled
and one-time or kind donations. volunteers and one-time or
recurring in-kind recurring in-kind donations.
Asks beneficiaries to pay
donations.
partial costs to generate Creates a market with
Focuses on earned income while support of patient capital
predictable funding addressing the social from socially motivated
sources. problem. investors who are willing
to accept below-market
May build an Focuses on predictable
returns and/or wait for
alternative to funding sources.
profits in exchange for
receiving income
May build an additional social impact.
from a target
income source into the
beneficiary into Once mature, relies on
model to supplement
the model for beneficiary payments and/
income from a target
addressing the or revenues generated
beneficiary.
problem. while addressing the
social problem.
Likely organizational Government Nonprofit organizations. For-profit companies or
form agencies nonprofit organizations.
or nonprofit
organizations.
population, cutting down on incarceration costs, and ultimately ending up

with more productive citizens, there is little hope of a market-based solution
to meeting this need.
Delivering rehabilitation programs to prisoners does not provide an
opportunity to generate profit.
RSVP, a San Francisco-based government initiative housed in the city’s
sheriff’s department, provides an example of a social-entrepreneurial initiative
addressing a no-market opportunity. The prisoners who are the beneficiaries
of its intensive rehabilitation program have no ability to pay for it.
Transformative Innovation

When Sunny Schwartz decided to start the first correctional program in the
country to adopt a restorative-justice approach to reducing recidivism, she
was already working with violent offenders at a San Francisco County prison
and had grown dissatisfied with traditional approaches to prisoner rehabilita-
tion: “It was clear that we weren’t reaching most people in any kind of sus-
tained, pro-social way.” With the support of San Francisco Sheriff Michael
Hennessey, Schwartz put together a diverse planning committee of former
offenders, crime victims, and community leaders to participate in the develop-
ment of the RSVP model: “We had victim’s rights advocates. We had formerly
abusive men and gang members. We had orthodox rabbis, Baptist ministers,
atheists. We had deputy sheriffs from line staff to upper echelon. And then we
had the usual stakeholders—probation and people on the bench.”81
The resulting program differs from the usual approaches, which tend to
focus either on punishment for the crime or rehabilitation of the offender,
by encouraging and teaching offenders to take responsibility for their crimes.
While some elements of RSVP programming resemble what might be
found in typical rehabilitation programs—English and GED classes, parent-
ing programs, and substance abuse treatment—the program also includes a
class that teaches offenders to experience empathy for those who have been
harmed by violence. Victims of crimes work with former offenders, commu-
nity members, business organizations, and other stakeholders to develop the
curriculum used for these classes, and to participate as trainers. When offend-
ers are released from prison, many participate in an “internship” program and
receive employment training while performing restorative acts in the commu-
nity. Those who are successful eventually return to the prison as facilitators of
RSVP sessions. Additionally, some of the victims of the RSVP participants
also become advocates and work with RSVP.
The results that RSVP’s innovative programming has generated thus far
indicate that the organization is on its way to developing a rehabilitation
method for violent offenders that has the potential to transform current prac-
tices in U.S. prisons and change beliefs about what is possible when working
with prisoners. An independent, quantitative evaluation of RSVP found that
the average annual incidence rate for fights and other forms of in-prison vio-
lence for their program participants is essentially zero, compared with 28 in
a traditional “lock-up” prison setting—even though the participants sleep in
81 Sunny Schwartz, (program administrator, RSVP), interview with the author, April 17, 2007.

open dorms. Further, offenders who participated in the program for at least
eight weeks had a 46 percent lower rate of re-arrest for violent crime than
those who served their time in a traditional jail. This difference increased to
83 percent for those who completed at least 16 weeks of the program.82
The organization is currently looking for ways to take its methods to
other parts of the country. To date, jurisdictions in Austin, Texas, and
Westchester County, New York—in addition to several local high schools—
have approached RSVP for advice on replicating the program; organizations
from New Zealand, Poland, and Mexico have begun to replicate the RSVP
model as well.
For no-market approaches like that of RSVP, achieving financial sustain-
ability requires full subsidies in order to start and maintain the initiative. One
option in no-market conditions is to work within the government, where
public funding is available. RSVP, whose staff is made up entirely of public
employees, provides an example of this. Based on its results, the program was
able to secure predictable funding in the form of a line item in the City of
San Francisco’s budget.
Triangle Resident Options for Substance Abusers Inc.

(TROSA): A Limited-Market Approach to Long-term
Substance-Abuse Treatment
Market Failure
A major gap exists in the United States between the needs of low-income
people suffering from substance abuse and the treatment programs available
to them. While addiction is a problem that people can suffer from for years
or even decades, few public programs offer more than 30 days of treatment.
Since this population has little ability to pay even for short-term treat-
ment, markets have left the need for long-term care for substance abusers
unaddressed.
The North Carolina–based nonprofit TROSA takes a limited-market
approach to addressing this problem. The organization has developed a
82 Gilligan and Lee, “The Resolve to Stop the Violence Project: Reducing Violence through a Jail-Based
Initiative.”

model that makes it possible for its beneficiaries to help cover a portion of
the costs of the services they receive.
TROSA provides a two-year residential treatment program, which includes
counseling, education, and what Founder Keith Artin calls vocational ther-
apy: “everything from someone learning a very specific trade—like getting a
truck license—to basic on-the-job work ethics.”83 While the programming
alone is a highly innovative approach to substance abuse treatment, equally
innovative is TROSA’s model for delivering this program to its residents at
no financial cost. Residents “pay” for the services they receive by working in
either the operations of the program itself—helping with food preparation,
transportation, and administration—or in one of the organization’s many
businesses, including TROSA Moving, TROSA Lawn Care, and TROSA
Furniture and Frame Shop.
As with many limited-market opportunities, the challenge is making this
program financially sustainable, as the vast majority of those in need of long-
term treatment for substance abuse have little ability to pay for such services.
TROSA’s model addressed this challenge by using revenues earned from
their business ventures to cover more than two-thirds of TROSA’s operat-
ing needs. The organization fills the remaining gap with support from other
predictable funding sources.
Outside the Classroom: Identifying a Low-Profit Market

for Drug and Alcohol Awareness on College Campuses
Market Failure
Each year, 1,700 college students in the United States die from alcohol-
related causes. Colleges and universities have long focused on hosting guest
speakers and alcohol-free social events to address the problem, but the mar-
ket has failed to produce a more effective solution.
The for-profit organization Outside the Classroom set out to fill this need
through a low-profit-market approach. The organization knew that a profit-
able market existed for its Web-based curriculum, yet several factors limited
83 Artin, (founder, TROSA), interview with the author, May 9, 2007.

that market. An Internet-based curriculum designed to be administered to
the entire student population was not a product that colleges and universities
were accustomed to paying for. Additionally, all of the potential purchasers,
public and private colleges and universities, operate as nonprofit organiza-
tions. While the potential for profitable sales did exist, it did not promise
quick or substantial returns for early investors.
Recognizing that drinking and drugs are commonly represented as a standard
part of the U.S. college experience in American music, movies, and advertise-
ments, Outside the Classroom Founder Brandon Busteed set out to change
that perception. The organization’s innovation is a curriculum designed to
educate entire campus populations, in order to influence not only individuals’
choices but campus culture as a whole.
In six years since its first sale of its Web-based curriculum, Outside the
Classroom has begun to change the way some colleges and universities think
about alcohol and drug abuse prevention. During the 2006–2007 academic
year, approximately 25 percent of first-year college students across the nation
completed the Outside the Classroom’s web training. Early results have
been promising: an independent study examining the efficacy of Outside
the Classroom’s programming found that students who had used its online
prevention program, AlcoholEdu, experienced 50 percent fewer negative
consequences related to alcohol—blackouts, hangovers, missed classes, physi-
cal fighting, unprotected sex, damaging property, and driving drunk—than
those who did not.
Like most social-entrepreneurial initiatives with a low-profit-market
approach, Outside the Classroom faced its biggest challenge in its start-up
phase. During that period, the organization was initially turned down by
dozens of grant makers and relied on patient angel investors to cover the
significant up-front costs for creating a curriculum and developing a market
for it. As angel investor Ed Roberts, professor of management of technology
at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, recalls, “When I invested in Outside
the Classroom, I was doing it primarily as a socially good act, with little faith
that I would ever see a return on my investment. The idea was highly specu-
lative as to whether or not it would work and have any real impact. But I

wanted to join my friend Howard Anderson in assisting this cause in which
he strongly believed. I now see that often times allowing underdeveloped but
potentially socially meaningful markets to grow can produce good returns,
both in regard to the original social purpose as well as from an investor’s
financial perspective.”84 The financial backing of investors who understood
that their support had the potential of creating social benefit in addition
to generating profits ultimately provided Outside the Classroom with time
to do both. Today, Outside the Classroom has captured 25 percent of the
college and university market, and some six years after initially lending their
support, investors are now seeing their first returns.
Summary: What is social entrepreneurship?

Each of these cases shows how social entrepreneurship takes up an opportu-
nity to provide a solution to a social problem that has great potential soci-
etal benefit, but little hope of generating the profits required by traditional
for-profit companies. Social entrepreneurs—adopting no-market, limited-
market, and low-profit-market approaches—address these problems while
striving for what can be considered a different kind of profit: the generation
of new and transformative solutions to the nation’s most pressing social
problems. The next section will show how social-entrepreneurial initiatives
are helping government benefit Americans by leveraging public and private
resources and testing and developing solutions.
How Does Social Entrepreneurship Help

Government to Benefit Americans?
The previous section described social entrepreneurship and its emergence
because of trends increasingly causing the traditional roles of the private,
public, and nonprofit sectors to blur. This section provides examples of social
entrepreneurs who, as new contributors in the realm of social problem solv-
ing, have come to serve as resources for government as it addresses social
problems to improve the lives of Americans. As Citizens Schools Co-founder
and CEO Eric Schwarz explains, “The best social entrepreneurs have great
results. Government is looking at ways to get results at low costs. Social
84 Ed Roberts, (professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), interview with the author, June 12,
2007.

entrepreneurs can help them achieve this. They can test new ideas and inno-
vations, and partner with government to bring successful ones to scale.”85
Government leaders continually face pressures to allocate limited tax
revenues to address pressing societal needs, and many have achieved a great
degree of success. While social entrepreneurs will never take the place of
government, conversations with social entrepreneurs and experts in the field
suggest that social entrepreneurship is uniquely positioned to help govern-
ment officials better address societal needs. Specifically, the social entrepre-
neurs interviewed help government improve the lives of their constituents in
two primary ways: (1) leveraging public and private resources and (2) testing
and developing solutions.
Five case studies illustrate how a variety of social-entrepreneurial initia-
tives have brought about these benefits.
Leveraging Public and Private Resources

Because of their focus on financial sustainability, social entrepreneurs identify
and utilize new and existing resources, both financial and nonfinancial, to
help them address social problems. Often this means that social entrepre-
neurs are able to implement solutions to social problems on a wider scale
that have previously been too costly. At times, social entrepreneurs also end
up shifting costs from public budgets to private resources, thus freeing up
government tax revenue to address other needs.
KaBOOM!
Market Failure
Swings, slides, and seesaws are the setting for many a childhood memory.
Creation of those playgrounds and outdoor play spaces for children has tra-
ditionally fallen under the domain of local parks and recreation departments
of municipal governments. For many communities, however, building quality
playgrounds competes with a variety of other pressing needs for limited pub-
lic funds—often leaving children in poorer communities without access to
great places to play. Unfortunately, the same places that lack public resources
for playgrounds also typically lack private ones, as the parents who live there
cannot pay for their own playground equipment.
85 Eric Schwarz, (CEO, Citizen Schools), interview with the author, April 26, 2007.

Transformative, Financially Sustainable Innovation
KaBOOM!’s innovation was to leverage private resources by identifying
an alternative revenue stream that would provide the organization with the
funds to build quality playgrounds in underserved communities—thus adopt-
ing a no-market approach that channels new resources for playgrounds into
these communities where the beneficiaries have no ability to pay. By work-
ing with major companies, including Home Depot, Sprint, and PepsiCo,
KaBOOM! has been able to offer two products—corporate team-building
and social marketing—that capture resources for playground building via
donations, service fees, and employee volunteer time. According to Founder
Darrell Hammond, “It’s beyond sponsorship. It’s beyond partnership. We’ve
really embedded ourselves into corporations and become a part of their
long-term strategy—not just their community affairs and do-good strategy,
but their business strategy as well, which means that, from a fee side, they’re
willing to pay for it.”86 Corporate volunteers gain team-building experience as
they work with neighborhood residents and one another to fund, design, and
build new playgrounds. KaBOOM! also works with companies to develop
social-marketing campaigns centered on KaBOOM! projects. The result is a
financial model that is almost 100 percent supported by fees.
As KaBOOM! has expanded in size and reach, the organization has been
able to achieve even greater efficiency in its financial model, as a result of the
cost efficiencies and benefits gained from operating at a much larger scale
than municipal parks and recreation departments ever could. By linking a
social problem without a market to a stable source of resources, KaBOOM!
has built 1,196 new playgrounds in 11 years.
Societal Benefits
KaBOOM! has helped government to benefit Americans by developing and
leveraging a new source of private resources that supplements public budgets,
and at times even shifts costs from public budgets to private resources. This
approach has helped to build playgrounds in communities that otherwise
never would have been able to build them, or that can now spend the funding
that would have been spent on the playground on other priorities.
86 Darrell Hammond, (founder, KaBOOM!), interview with the author, April 17, 2007.

ITNAmerica
Market Failure
Too often, older Americans must choose between their safety and their
mobility—between continuing to drive as their abilities decline or remain-
ing homebound and dependent on others after giving up their cars. Prior
attempts to address this problem have failed to fully meet the needs of their
target senior consumers. Senior transportation programs, often government
funded, have typically relied on attempts to convince older people to ride
buses or subways; on organizing volunteers to pick up vanloads of seniors
for group trips; or offering rides to a handful of specific destinations,
such as medical appointments. Finding these options insufficient, many
seniors continue to drive when they are no longer fit to operate a vehicle,
or become increasingly housebound as they restrict their own driving and
become dependent on favors from family and friends. As ITNAmerica
Founder Katherine Freund explains, “Depending on the private automobile
for transportation is inadequate for years before people actually stop driv-
ing. And then people who do stop driving outlive that decision by about
ten years. It’s a very big problem because of the aging of the population.
There are more older people. There are more older people living longer.
There are more older people outliving the ability to drive longer. You can
see if you multiply those things together you come up with a pretty big
social problem.”87
Transformative, Financially Sustainable Innovation

ITNAmerica created a new option for seniors: providing rides in private cars
available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, with “door-through-door” service
using a combination of paid and volunteer drivers. Taking a limited-market
approach, ITNAmerica charges a nominal one-time membership fee of $35
and about 50 percent of the cost of a taxi for each ride. Payments must be
made for every ride, but no money changes hands in the vehicle. Seniors
fund their personal transportation accounts in advance and receive a monthly
statement in the mail.
As the organization has embarked on an ambitious five-year growth
strategy, ITNAmerica has been quite efficient in leveraging private
87 Katherine Freund, (founder, ITNAmerica), interview with the author, March 3, 2007.

resources. According to Freund, “We have a very flexible approach to
resources. We say money is one kind of resource, but there are other kinds
of assets that have economic value. And if we can find a way to capture dif-
ferent kinds of economic value, then we can use those resources also to pay
for rides.” 88 Volunteer drivers, for example, make up about 40 to 60 percent
of the driving team. This helps the organization keep costs manageable, and
also offers a way for seniors to subsidize the cost of their own rides. Many
of the volunteers who are over the age of 60 contribute their own volun-
teer driving time through ITNAmerica’s Transportation Social Security
program, building up credits in their personal transportation accounts for
their own future use of the services while they are still safe and healthy
to transport others. Family members may also supply volunteer time and
make in-kind contributions of their driving credits to their relatives who
are using the service. Seniors may trade their personal vehicles when they
are no longer able to use them and apply the liquidated equity to fund their
personal transportation accounts. The donated vehicles are often used to
deliver rides.
In addition, ITNAmerica’s software, ITNRides, plans and tracks mem-
bership accounts, rides, and distances, maximizing the efficiency of routes.
Freund characterizes this system as one of the organization’s most important
innovations: “One way to describe it is that we married a very grassroots
model to a very high-tech support system. So we used technology to create
efficiency, and we took the unusual step of building it ourselves, instead of
purchasing off-the-shelf technology, so that it would be affordable to small
organizations and communities.”89
Societal Benefits
ITNAmerica has developed a highly efficient model that ultimately funds
itself—by capturing nominal fees from customers and leveraging private
resources through volunteer time and community philanthropic support.
When the organization starts up an affiliate program in a new city, it limits
the amount of public funding it accepts to 50 percent or less of the capital
necessary. Moreover, no public funds may be used for day-to-day opera-
tions, because ongoing use of public funds crowds out the development of
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.

the private community support so essential for long-term sustainability.
Freund explains, “Most of the resources for transportation are private. If
you don’t have a model that is built to access them, then you’ll fall into
the pattern of being one of many providers in a turf war over the public
dollars.”90 She notes that while many social problems require ongoing
public support, senior transport—which targets a population willing and
able to pay modest fees—is not one of them. Once ITNAmerica affiliates
reach their full capacity, the public funding that helped to get them started
can be directed to other needs. As a result, ITNAmerica leverages minimal
initial support from government to meet the transportation needs of older
Americans across the country.
Testing and Developing Solutions

Despite the best efforts of government, nonprofits, and individual citizens,
solutions for social problems can be hard to find. As Gregory Dees notes,
“With all of our scientific knowledge and rational planning, we still do not
know in advance what will work effectively. Thus, progress in the social
sphere depends on a process of innovation and experimentation…an active,
messy, highly decentralized learning process.”91 Given the challenges—and
frequent failures—of attempts to innovate, social entrepreneurs supply a sec-
ond valuable benefit to government. According to Jeffrey Robinson, assistant
professor of management and entrepreneurship at New York University’s
Stern School of Business, “Experimentation is the value of social entrepre-
neurship to government. How do you break a logjam? Social entrepreneurs
are often successful in figuring it out.”92
The remaining three cases in this section provide examples of how social
entrepreneurs have helped government benefit Americans by developing
solutions, testing new theories, or designing new approaches to addressing
social problems.
90 Ibid.
91 Dees, “Taking Social Entrepreneurship Seriously,” 26.
92 Jeffrey Robinson, (professor, New York University), interview with the author, April 12, 2007.

City Year
Market Failure
The idea of voluntary national service—what City Year Co-Founder Michael
Brown defines as “calling on America’s youth to give a year or more in ser-
vice to the community and country to tackle pressing domestic needs and
problems”93—has a long history in the United States. More than 100 years
ago, philosopher William James called national service the “moral equivalent
to war,” suggesting that national service could be seen as an alternative to
military service, serving one’s country through volunteerism. More recently,
during the civil rights era, many advocated social integration through service.
Political leaders and commentators ranging from Senator Ted Kennedy of
Massachusetts on the left to William Buckley on the right were champions of
the idea.94 Despite considerable interest, however, national service never took
off. Brown characterizes the issue as one of “passion and dissonance,” and
theorized that national service—like the television and home computer—was
an “experiential product” that the country needed a chance to see before they
would know how much they wanted it. But national service was not the kind of
service for which its beneficiaries could pay. Those serving would be volunteers,
unlikely to be willing to pay for a volunteer opportunity even if they had the
means. Those they would serve would also have limited if any means to pay.
Transformative, Financially Sustainable Social Innovation

Setting out to create an “experiential product” that would show Americans
what national service could accomplish, City Year’s founders started by con-
sidering the service programs that were already in existence. The small, state-
based service corps tended to be focused on physical labor and often open
only to low-income or high-risk youth needing professional skills. Brown and
Co-Founder Alan Khazei were determined to make City Year different. They
extended the time of service to a full year. They recruited “corps members”
from a wide range of backgrounds, bringing together young people of different
classes, races, and educational experiences. While a small portion of the work
is physical, City Year’s volunteers primarily focused on education and youth
93 Brown, National Service or Bust, 4.

94 In 1989, Kennedy sponsored S1439, “A Bill to Enhance National and Community Service, and for
Other Purposes.” For Buckley’s position on national service, see Buckley, Gratitude: Reflections on What We
Owe to Our Country.

development, serving as mentors for children in partnership with public schools
and organizing and running after-school programs and curricula on social
issues including domestic violence prevention, AIDS awareness, and diversity.
In its early development, all City Year activities ran on private funding:
corporations sponsored “teams” of volunteers. The decision to begin without
government funds was largely a strategic one. In Brown’s words, “If national
service were to ignite civic energy, then citizens, private organizations, and
companies needed to be engaged in its development and implementation…
Rather than the creation of a new, single, ‘silo-ed’ government program,
national service, we and others believed, should release civic energy and
therefore be rooted in citizen, nonprofit, and private sector initiative.”95
Societal Benefits
As City Year’s privately funded model for national service gained strength,
it captured the attention of the architects of two government initiatives
dedicated to promoting national service: the Corporation for National and
Community Service and AmeriCorps. According to Brown, “President
Clinton would later say that his visit to City Year [during his 1992 presiden-
tial campaign] helped to inspire his creation of AmeriCorps by providing
him with a concrete example to which he could point to show others that his
vision for national service could work.” City Year became one of 800 non-
profits to receive federal funding for AmeriCorps’s service programs. City
Year’s model helped to supply government with the information it needed to
create a program that now provides diverse groups of young Americans access
to a wide variety of national service opportunities. These young Americans, in
turn, provide services to communities in need across the country.
New Leaders for New Schools (New Leaders)

Market Failure
In school districts located in low-income communities across the United
States, many students are performing below national standards—leaving them
with fewer skills and lowered prospects for long-term economic success. New
Leaders founder Jon Schnur observed that in the school settings that served as
exceptions to this rule, strong leadership by a committed principal was a com-
mon factor. “We’ve never seen a great classroom without an effective teacher,
95 Brown, National Service or Bust, 14.

and we’ve never seen a school driving results for all kids without a great princi-
pal. Even where you’ve got good teachers, they don’t stay and they don’t work
together in the right way and ultimately collaborate in the right way without
a great principal.”96 Yet there was little focus on the recruitment, selection, or
training for these essential school leaders, who “used to be largely expected by
the system to be the manager of the bureaucracy and the status quo, and an
operational manager keeping things running smoothly.”

New Leaders was founded to test the hypothesis that putting resources
towards selecting, training, and supporting principals who are committed to
meeting high standards—even for children in the toughest neighborhoods
with access to the fewest resources—will have a positive impact on students
and ultimately the entire school’s performance. Through a highly competi-
tive process, New Leaders identifies educators whose values and skills sug-
gest they can “lead and build schools’ cultures to drive high expectation for
all kids,” and trains them to lead high-performing schools. Applications to
the program are numerous: only approximately 6 percent of applicants are
selected each year. Those chosen spend an intensive year as “residents” in an
urban school, and then receive placement assistance and ongoing support as
they take the reins as principals in schools of their own. Through partner-
ships in several large city school districts, New Leaders’ no-market approach
is supported in part by public funds, in the form of the salaries their residents
and principals receive from the school district where they work. These public
funds are supplemented by the support of several long-term philanthropic
donors, who cover the costs of screening, selecting, training, mentoring, and
providing ongoing support to their principals.
Six years of experience now show that their initial hypothesis—that a
committed, supported, high-quality principal could transform student perfor-
mance—has proven true. New Leaders presently operates in nine cities across
the nation: New York City, the District of Columbia, Chicago, Memphis,
Oakland, Baltimore, New Orleans, Prince George’s County (MD), and Aspire
Public Schools (CA). New Leaders–trained principals lead as many as 25 per-
cent of the students in those districts. Approximately 95 percent of people who
train with New Leaders take on school leadership roles—80 percent as princi-
96 Jon Schnur, (founder, New Leaders), interview with the author, March 30, 2007.

pals—compared with fewer than half of principal trainees becoming principals
in other, more traditional programs. Their schools show an improvement in
student test scores. Across the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 academic years,
100 percent of schools led by New Leaders principals for at least two consecu-
tive years achieved notable increases in student achievement, with 83 percent
achieving double-digit gains. Average student achievement gains ranged from
14 to 22 percentage points by city over the two-year period.97 The organization
is currently striving “to recruit and place enough people to provide 25 percent
of the new urban principals needed in the U.S. by 2012.”98
Societal Benefits
New Leaders provides an example of how social-entrepreneurial experi-
mentation, when successful, can produce new practices that, once they’ve
been tested and honed, government can take up to benefit Americans. New
Leaders was able to take on the initial costs and risk of testing out its theory
that principals trained to be great leaders can build high-performing schools.
Now, city governments across the country are looking to New Leaders as a
model. Some have brought New Leaders to their cities, while others have
started their own principal-leadership programs, based on the New Leaders
approach, in order to provide their students with the highest quality educa-
tion possible.
Benetech
Market Failure
Twenty years ago, if a blind person wanted to read printed text not available
in Braille, depending on the help of someone else was just about the only
choice. The best available technology for a blind person to read printed text, a
machine the size of a clothes dryer with a five-figure price tag, was an unre-
alistic and unaffordable option for accomplishing daily tasks like browsing
a newspaper or looking over a piece of mail. The technology for creating an
affordable, portable machine existed. However, the potential customer base,
blind individuals and their employers, was too small to promise a traditional
97 This represents New Leaders for New Schools’ data for performance in math and English language
arts in schools led by a New Leaders principal for at least two consecutive years as of 2005–2006, and for
which school-level achievement data were publicly available for both school years.
98 Schnur interview, March 30, 2007.

return on investment. As a result, technology investors were unwilling to take
the risk to develop such a product.

Benetech was founded as a low-profit-market approach to ensuring the
development of technology that promises to have a high social value despite
low potential for generating a typical return on investment. As Founder
Jim Fruchterman explains, “The last 18 years have been great years for the
computer industry. Computers have gotten faster, better, cheaper, smaller,
lighter, brighter. What we’ve done is essentially ridden the back of that
industry to say: ‘How can we take advantage of these high-performance,
low-cost platforms and turn them into effective tools for people with
disabilities?’”99 The company’s first product, the Arkenstone Reading
Machine, makes use of the optical character recognition (OCR) technology
found in scanners, and can be used with a personal computer to scan and
read text aloud.
At a cost of less than $2,000, the Arkenstone Reading Machine quickly
found a larger customer base than originally predicted. In addition to blind
individuals and their employers, people with learning disabilities and gov-
ernment agencies that serve the disabled, including the U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs, began purchasing the product. This unexpected, expanded
customer base helped to generate millions of dollars in revenue annually, and
ultimately led to the sale of the reading machine and the Arkenstone brand
to a for-profit distributor of disabilities products. The machine is now in its
fourth release and remains an industry-leading product.
The Arkenstone Reading Machine provides an example of how a low-
profit-market approach can eventually develop a market that could be served
by a traditional for-profit approach. In Benetech’s case, selling the reading
machine to a for-profit distributor once there was a sufficient market has
enabled the organization to fund the development of other socially valuable
technology solutions, without being constrained to those projects with high
potential for significant profitability.
Societal Benefits
Benetech was able to test and ultimately develop a self-sustaining solu-
tion to a problem caused by a market failure that government was unable to
99 Jim Fruchterman, (founder, Benetech), interview with the author, March 15, 2007.

address. Its inexpensive reading machine, tested in the early stages by accept-
ing below-average returns, ultimately ended up creating a new and profitable
market, in addition to serving the thousands of Americans who previously
were unable to read printed text on their own. Among Benetech’s customers
was the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which was able to better meet
the needs of disabled Americans.
Summary: How social entrepreneurship benefits Americans

By identifying new methods of leveraging public and private resources to
address social problems, in addition to testing and developing promising
solutions, social entrepreneurship complements government’s role in address-
ing market failures to benefit Americans. As Share Our Strength Founder
Billy Shore points out: “It is not what social entrepreneurs do instead of gov-
ernment but rather that they create a pipeline for government. Social entre-
preneurs do things that government cannot do. They take more risks. They
are closer to the people that they are designed to serve.”100 The section that
follows will show how government has already been supportive of individual
social entrepreneurship initiatives.
How is Government Currently Supporting

Social-entrepreneurial Initiatives?
The previous two sections described what social entrepreneurship is and how
social entrepreneurs help government benefit Americans—as they lever-
age public and private resources, and test and develop solutions. This section
explores a variety of ways in which all levels of government have supported
social-entrepreneurial initiatives. Interviews for this report revealed that, while
government currently lacks a comprehensive and strategic approach for collab-
orating with social entrepreneurs, isolated incidents do exist of local, state, and
federal employees working with social entrepreneurs on a number of initiatives
addressing a variety of social problems. The cases presented in this section are
organized according to the five primary methods, uncovered during the inter-
views, that government has employed to support social entrepreneurship:
• Encouraging social innovation;
100 Billy Shore, (founder, Share Our Strength), interview with the author, May 30, 2007.

• Creating an enabling environment for social entrepreneurial initiatives;
• Rewarding initiatives for their performance;
• Scaling initiatives’ success; and
• Producing knowledge that enhances social entrepreneurs’ efforts.
Encouraging Social Innovation

For any entrepreneur, the start-up period of an organization is critical. In
the private sector, one-third of new employer establishments do not survive
the first two years, and more than half fail in the first four years.101 For social
entrepreneurs, launching a new initiative can be just as challenging. To help
social entrepreneurs endure the trials of the start-up phase, several founda-
tions, most prominently Echoing Green and Ashoka, provide support spe-
cifically for early organizational development. In addition, various academic
programs sponsor competitions and awards to encourage social innova-
tion and the founding of new initiatives. According to Surdna Foundation
Director Edward Skloot, government, too, has an important role to play in
what he calls “acting as a seedbed for innovation.”102 Skoll Foundation’s Lance
Henderson echoes this sentiment: “There is no doubt that if government could
take a more proactive role in thinking what its role would be in encourag-
ing social innovation, it could be a significant contribution.”103 In the cases
discussed below, government encouraged social innovation by providing seed
funds to support social-entrepreneurial initiatives in their start-up phases.
ITNAmerica takes pride in the fact that its daily operations are intention-
ally self-funding—and therefore independent of government dollars except
as part of the start-up phase of a new affiliate. Yet ITNAmerica would not
be where it is today without the federal seed funds it received to help get its
model up and running. The Transit IDEA program, administered by the
Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science and
funded by the Federal Transit Administration, provided two milestone grants
that Founder Katherine Freund characterizes as the organization’s “first big
piece of venture funds.”104 The first grant, a feasibility study, enabled Freund
101 U.S Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, “Frequently Asked Questions,” http://www.
sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf.
102 Ed Skloot, (Surdna Foundation), interview with the author, April 13, 2007.
103 Lance Henderson, (Skoll Foundation), interview with the author, June 7, 2007.
104 Freund interview, March 3, 2007.

to explore senior citizens’ consumer behaviors related to fee-based automo-
bile transportation services. The second study explored innovative payment
plans and information system technology. When a third grant from the
Federal Transit Administration spanned an administration change and was
cut short, Freund mobilized a network of ITN supporters to contact their
congressional delegates. Soon, the Federal Transit Administration agreed to
directly fund ITN’s model development.
In another example, RSVP received what was, in essence, government seed
funding delivered through noncapital resources. When Program Administrator
Sunny Schwartz set out to create a new approach to rehabilitating violent
offenders, her boss, Sheriff Michael Hennessey, authorized her to devote a
considerable portion of her time, and that of her staff, to creating the program.
Until the staff succeeded in securing a foundation grant to help with program
start-up, the initiative ran only on the existing salaries of public employees and
the good will of community volunteers to test the idea.
Creating an Enabling Environment

In interviews, the researchers found that government has created an enabling
environment for social entrepreneurs in a variety of ways—most prominently
by removing barriers, lending credibility, and supporting collaboration. The
examples discussed below show how government has succeeded in supporting
social entrepreneurs through these practices.
At times, existing practices and systems present barriers to addressing
a social problem with an innovative and entrepreneurial approach. “Social
entrepreneurs are constantly pushing up against artificial barriers,” says David
Eisner, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service.
“Teacher certification, social-service certification, volunteer-manager certi-
fication all end up preventing social entrepreneurship and limiting scale and
innovation as it relates to solving the problem.”105 In these cases, as Ashoka
Vice President Susan Davis has noted, government can play a crucial role
in removing barriers to “offer an enabling environment to entrepreneurs.”
She says government is well positioned to identify and address “all barriers,
particularly those created by government, that block or discourage people’s
entrepreneurship.”106
105 Eisner interview, April 30, 2007.

106 Davis, Social Entrepreneurship, 12.

In some cases, existing laws can constitute barriers to implementing new
ideas. ITNAmerica, for example, found that policy changes were essential to
removing barriers to creating a viable transportation alternative for seniors.
When the organization encountered problems accepting car donations—
because of a Maine state law meant to protect consumers from unregulated
used car dealers that limited the number of donated or traded cars they could
accept—ITNAmerica went to work on a bill that would make an exception for
organizations serving the elderly. As a result of ITNAmerica’s efforts, Maine’s
Act to Promote Access to Transportation for Seniors, sponsored by State
Senator Michael Brennan, passed in 2005.107 It provides an exemption from
automobile dealership laws for any public or nonprofit organization that uses
automobile donations to provide transportation to seniors, or that takes per-
sonal automobiles in trade from seniors in exchange for transportation services.
For several successful social entrepreneurs, government officials have
helped them create an enabling environment simply by drawing attention and
ultimately lending credibility to their causes. For example, First Lady Mikey
L. Hoeven of North Dakota has made substance abuse one of her key issue
areas, and a letter from her office to all of the public high schools in her state
has generated a new market opportunity for Outside the Classroom. For
ITNAmerica and KaBOOM!, support from public officials—and particularly
their attendance at events—has been helpful in generating media attention
for their organizations. In addition, four of the social entrepreneurs inter-
viewed—Jim Fruchterman of Benetech, Katherine Freund of ITNAmerica,
Michael Brown of City Year, and Jon Schnur of New Leaders—have had
opportunities to testify at federal congressional hearings regarding their social
issue areas. Such opportunities both recognize them as leaders in their fields
and allow them to influence the environments in which they operate.
For New Leaders for New Schools, local governments have created an
enabling environment by helping to convene internal leaders and commu-
nity stakeholders to support the initiative when it enters a new city. Both to
ensure public, private, and community support and because the New Leaders
financial model requires ongoing private sector funding, interested munici-
palities must convene external community leaders for fundraising and other
types of community support. In its third year of operation, the New Leaders
model has gained such credibility that it has begun hosting city competitions
107 For details, see Maine State Legislature, An Act to Promote Access to Transportation for Seniors.

between municipalities in order to choose its next expansion site. The win-
ning sites are those most able to demonstrate that they can create an enabling
environment, marshalling city leaders, government resources, and engaged
citizen groups who can demonstrate the interest and energy to develop New
Leaders in their cities. New Leaders has now selected six of the nine cities in
which it operates through this city competition process.
Rewarding Performance
Another powerful way government has supported the work of social entre-
preneurs is by rewarding their performance through government financial
support. As Howard Husock, director of the Manhattan Institute’s Social
Entrepreneurship Initiative, points out, “Social entrepreneurs want access
to reliable sources of financing that recognize performance.”108 Four of the
organizations in the interview pool have received government support in the
form of performance-based rewards, through funding and purchasing. These
rewards, in turn, have further enabled these organizations to leverage public
and private resources and develop solutions.
When social entrepreneurs’ innovations begin to catch on, government
can recognize their positive results and reward their performance by insti-
tutionalizing funding. For example, following RSVP’s success in reducing
recidivism among criminal offenders, San Francisco city managers established
RSVP as a line item in the budget to ensure continued funding for the initia-
tive even after private grant funding ran out. As discussed in the previous
section, City Year also benefits from institutionalized funding, as one of 800
nonprofits to receive federal funding from the Americorps program that it
also helped to inspire.
When social entrepreneurs produce and sell socially beneficial goods or
services, another way government rewards performance is through purchas-
ing their products. One of the single largest customers for the Arkenstone
Reading Machine is the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which
purchases the technology and distributes it to patients at VA hospitals.
Similarly, Outside the Classroom’s Web-based curriculum is sold to public
universities across the nation. While CEO Brandon Busteed admits that
private universities, which typically have greater discretion in their spending,
were among the first to purchase the new technology, their positive results
108 Howard Husock, (director, Manhattan Institute Social Entrepreneurship Initiative), interview with
the author, May 9, 2007

in reducing substance abuse and dropout rates have been rewarded with an
expanding base of public university customers.
Scaling Success
Often, the best reward for successful performance in social entrepreneur-
ship is having the chance to scale success. Expanding the reach of a proven
solution in a situation of market failure is often critical if the solution is to
be truly transformative. While for-profit companies can use an initial public
offering (IPO) to secure the funds for the huge initial investment that scaling
requires, there is no equivalent available to social entrepreneurs—who, even
if they have developed a low-profit model, rarely operate within traditional
profit margins to scale, let alone go public. As a result, in interviews, govern-
ment often came up as the equivalent of an IPO that could help social entre-
preneurs scale their approaches. As Jeff Bradach of the nonprofit consulting
firm, the Bridgespan Group, explains, “While private funders will sometimes
provide seed money to stimulate the development of local programs, they
rarely supply the capital to build a network of sites. The one exception to this
rule is the federal government, which sometimes supports the proliferation
of successful programs.”109 For the social entrepreneurs discussed in the cases
below, government at the federal, state, and local levels has played an impor-
tant role in scaling their initiatives.
At the city level, government municipalities around the country have
begun to hear about the quality of New Leaders’ principals and the ease of
working with New Leaders staff. Many now approach New Leaders with a
desire to replicate the model. The demand has been so great that each time
New Leaders has the capacity to expand they host a competitive “bidding”
process. New Leaders now operates in nine cities.
In the case of ITNAmerica, which started in Portland, Maine, scale has
taken place in several ways. First, state legislatures and governors’ offices
have stepped forward with replication funds in Connecticut, New York,
Utah, and Illinois, and state legislatures in Rhode Island110 and Hawaii111
have passed resolutions to plan for ITN replication or to support fed-
109 Bradach, “Going to Scale,” 25.

110 Rhode Island State Legislature, Requesting the Department of Elderly Affairs and the Advisory Commis-
sion on Aging to Study all Aspects of the Independent Transportation Network.
111 Hawaii State Legislature, Transportation for Senior Citizens and Visually Impaired Persons.

eral efforts for expansion. Second, the federal government has supported
spreading information about the model. In 2000, Executive Director
Katherine Freund was selected as a National Transit Institute Fellow, a
program paid for by the federal government and administered by Rutgers
University in New Jersey. She traveled to 13 states to share what she had
learned in starting ITNAmerica. Because of the federal support, many
senior transportation programs have used ITNAmerica learnings to improve
their own services.
There may be a third way in which the ITNAmerica model will be scaled,
which could be seen as the equivalent of an IPO. In 2006, Senator Susan M.
Collins from Maine introduced the Older Americans Sustainable Mobility
Act of 2006 based on the ITNAmerica model. As Collins stated in her
Senate testimony, the legislation would “create a five-year demonstration
project, overseen by the Administration on Aging, to establish a national,
nonprofit senior transportation network to help provide some transporta-
tion alternatives to our aging population.” This last example of scale shows
how scaling at the federal level can end up having major benefits not only
for the social entrepreneur whose innovation is replicated, but also for the
government that can take up new solutions once they have been tested and
honed by social entrepreneurs. In Collins’ words: “The goal of this network
is to build upon creative, successful models that are already showing how
the transportation needs of older Americans can be met in a manner that is
economically sustainable. This last point is important, Mr. President. Senior
transportation is a complex and expensive logistical problem. We cannot
expect to address this problem by creating a brand-new, expansive, federal
government program that requires the commitment of vast sums year after
year in order to succeed.”112
City Year provides another example of how federal and city governments
have supported scale. City Year received a critical federal grant in 1995, when
the organization operated in just one city. The money allowed expansion into
five additional cities over five years. In addition, City Year, as part of a larger
coalition of advocates for national service, worked with elected federal poli-
cymakers to establish the Corporation for National and Community Service.
One of the Corporation for National and Community Service’s three core
programs, AmeriCorps, is based on the City Year model and may be the best
112 Collins, “Introduction of the S. 2311: ‘Older Americans Sustainable Mobility Act of 2006.”

example of an IPO equivalent that succeeded in supporting a social entrepre-
neur in scaling their approach.
Producing Knowledge
Innovation most often requires making use of reliable information that can
help to answer such questions as: What is the target social problem? How
many people are affected? Are current or past activities effective in mak-
ing changes? For this reason, successful social entrepreneurship is often
closely associated with what Gregory Dees calls “market-like feedback
mechanisms.”113 Government often plays a critical role as a resource and part-
ner for producing knowledge that helps identify the problems, document the
solutions, and compare various interventions against standards for success.
Government specifically provides research data, establishes critical standards,
and produces or funds evaluations that provide critical information for those
working toward solving social problems.
For example, ITNAmerica, Benetech, and KaBOOM! all have relied on
government data and research to understand the nature of the social problems
they are working to address. For ITNAmerica, federally funded transporta-
tion studies revealed the safety concerns for older drivers that have become
an essential part of justifying the need for ITNAmerica’s service. Census data
were also useful in predicting the growing size of the senior citizen popula-
tion, and allowed for program planning. Benetech also relied on Census data
to understand the prevalence of visual impairment in estimating the size of its
customer base. For KaBOOM!, government tracking of playgrounds actu-
ally began after their initiative was well established. They regard the fact that
the federal government now records the number of playgrounds as a sign of
their program’s influence. They use the government reports to gauge their
own “market share” of playground development and the successful start-up of
similar KaBOOM!-like organizations around the country.
Government data are important not only for problem identification but
also for setting standards and gauging success. New Leaders uses government
data as a central measure of program success. Student achievement is mea-
sured across the country using standardized, federally mandated tests. Federal
standards allow New Leaders to compare the performance of students in
schools led by their principals to students in non–New Leaders schools and
113 Dees, “The Meaning of ‘Social Entrepreneurship,’” 6.

in other similar districts. The federal data also allow New Leaders to gauge
their own progress over time, assessing whether their initiative is taking
deeper hold and whether they are influencing district-wide student perfor-
mance gains. Because of government’s role in producing clear, comparable
standards, New Leaders and others working in the education field have
detailed metrics that outline their path to success—metrics that are critical
for their own evaluation, comparison to peers, and ultimately for knowing
the social impact of their efforts.
Finally, for RSVP, government played a key role in producing knowledge
directly about the program. Submitting their program to an independent,
randomized evaluation study, RSVP has strong evidence of program effec-
tiveness and was partially funded with public dollars.
Summary: How Government Supports

Social-entrepreneurial Initiatives
Table 6.2 provides an overview of all eight case studies and government’s
five methods of involvement. Notably, while each of the case studies was
supported by government in at least one of the five ways, none of the social
entrepreneurs benefited from government in all five ways.
Conclusion
This chapter was developed to introduce government leaders to the field of
social entrepreneurship. It also represents one of the first explorations of the
relationship between social entrepreneurship and government. The eight
case studies discussed here each showed a social-entrepreneurial initiative
responding to some type of market failure—ranging from restoring prison-
ers to their communities to preventing drug and alcohol abuse on university
campuses. Each of the organizations highlighted has developed transforma-
tive innovations—from technology to support the blind, to training and
mentorship of high-school principals. They have built financially sustainable
models, gaining efficiency by relying on volunteers, marrying their social
problems to complementary private sector funding sources, convincing satis-
fied consumers to pay for services, and developing new markets to sell their
products at profitable price points. All of their models have benefited both
government and society as a result.

Table 6.2 Government Involvement with Social-Entrepreneurial Initiatives
Method of government support
Encouraging social Creating an enabling Rewarding
Social entrepreneur innovation environment performance Scaling success Producing knowledge
ITNAmerica Seed funding. Three Breaking barriers. State Replication. States and cities Research/data.
federal grants and a policy changes, facilitated car sign on as replication sites; Government data help
federal congressional donations, support volunteers’ federal legislation introduced to show safety of older
designation of funds car insurance. scale the ITN model nationally. drivers and predict size
used to develop model. Credibility. Elected officials Spread information. Federally of elderly population.
participate, lending recognition sponsored fellowship provided
and media coverage, founder founder with platform to visit 13
appointed by the president to the cities to encourage adoption of
Advisory Committee for the White elements of the program.
House Conference on Aging.
City Year Credibility. Elected officials Funding. Replication. Federal grant Research/data.
frequently visit and champion Established initiative allowed expansion to new cities. Government reports on
initiative, founder testified to receives consistent volunteerism statistics,
U.S. Congress. federal grants to Federal government embraced cost savings of
support model. national service model and volunteers.
established Corporation for
National and Community
Service and Americorps.
Benetech Credibility. Founder testified to Purchasing. Research/data.
U.S. Congress. Federal agencies Government data
purchase the assist in understanding
reading machine. customer base.
KaBOOM! Credibility. Elected officials Purchasing. Research/data.
participate, lending recognition Some city parks Government recently
and media coverage. departments use began collecting
in lieu of their own national statistics on
processes and playgrounds.
purchasing.

Table 6.2 Government Involvement with Social-Entrepreneurial Initiatives —continued
Method of government support
Encouraging social Creating an enabling Rewarding
Social entrepreneur innovation environment performance Scaling success Producing knowledge
New Leaders for Convening. Cities unite internal Replication. Once model Standards. Gauge
New Schools staff and community leaders was established, cities began success using federal
to support local New Leaders to compete to be New measures of student
initiatives. Leaders sites. performance.
Resolve to Stop the Seed funding. Initiative Funding. Evaluation. Sponsored
Violence Program created by government Established study of program
staff and public initiative added effectiveness.
resources. to city budget,
institutionalizing the
approach.

Outside the Credibility. Endorsement by First Purchasing. Public
Classroom Lady of North Dakota helped institutions of higher
reach new customer base. learning purchase
the curriculum.
TROSA Seed funding. Purchasing.
Low-interest loans State contracts
and financing for for services to
residential facilities. prisoners.
The previous sections of this chapter have also highlighted numerous
ways in which government is already supporting social entrepreneurship in
the United States. In fact, in many cases, the support of government lead-
ers has been essential to social entrepreneurs’ success. Yet, while each of
the social entrepreneurs interviewed could point to at least one example of
individualized government collaboration, all expressed an interest in a coor-
dinated governmental approach to supporting and ultimately increasing the
impact of social-entrepreneurial initiatives.
Interviews with social entrepreneurs and other experts in the field repeat-
edly suggested that there is good reason for government to begin thinking
this way. First, social entrepreneurs have demonstrated remarkable success
in advancing promising solutions to social problems that governments, too,
seek to address. As College Summit Founder J. B. Schramm puts it, “Social
entrepreneurship offers government an opportunity to leverage its dollars
much farther than ever before. Social entrepreneurs are on the ground. We’re
seeing and addressing problems two steps ahead of everyone else, and we can
share what we know on Capitol Hill.”114 Second, as the current generation of
social entrepreneurs seeks to further maximize their impact, they are finding
over and over again that local, state, and federal governments hold the key to
unlocking their full potential. As Skoll Foundation’s Lance Henderson states,
“A lot of people are talking about how public policy—through ideas like new
organizational forms, new tax incentives, and other government policies—
can be an important lever for change.”115
Three brand new initiatives that cropped up during the writing of this
chapter, summarized in Table 6.3, have provided evidence that not only
social entrepreneurs are looking for ways for government to join forces with
social-entrepreneurial initiatives. Government, too, has begun to seek oppor-
tunities to join forces strategically with social entrepreneurs:
Louisiana’s Office of Social Entrepreneurship

Following the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Louisiana
Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu and his office have been determined
to find inspired solutions to the myriad problems facing the state. The
unprecedented needs associated with rebuilding have amplified already
114 J. B. Schramm, (founder, College Summit), interview with authors, June 4, 2007.
115 Henderson interview, June 7, 2007.

Table 6.3 Recent Government Support of Social Entrepreneurship
2007 Social
entrepreneurship and
government initiatives Overview
Louisiana’s Office of Social The first-ever governmental Office of Social Entrepreneurship in the
Entrepreneurship United States aims to shift the orientation of social services in the
states to a results-driven approach, and designates the city of New
Orleans as a Social Entrepreneurship Empowerment Zone.
North Carolina Low-profit This legislation would create a new organizational identity—a low-
Limited Liability Partnership profit limited liability partnership company (L3C). L3Cs would operate
Company (L3C) as private enterprises, but with charitable or educational purposes,
no significant purpose of income or appreciation of property, and no
express political or legislative advocacy mission. The primary purpose
would be to allow socially motivated profit-making partnerships to
gain access to philanthropic funds through a little-used but already
established vehicle called program-related investments (PRIs).
Girl Scouts of the USA Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, this program is
Challenge and Change currently being piloted with teen girls in 22 communities across the
country. It focuses on teaching social entrepreneurship to girls in rural
areas, beginning with a five-day retreat where they learn leadership,
problem solving, and entrepreneurial skills.
intense demands on the state’s social service system. Simultaneously, the

unprecedented flow of emergency funds and philanthropic support to the
region has created new opportunities—but with strong demands to see
meaningful results.116
Early in 2007, Landrieu founded the first ever Office of Social
Entrepreneurship, which aims to shift the orientation of the social-services
sector of the state to a results-driven approach, and designates the city of
New Orleans as a “Social Entrepreneurship Empowerment Zone,” with the
intention of making it “the most hospitable place in the country for those
who are testing and launching the best, most effective new program models
for social change.”117
North Carolina’s Low-Profit, Limited Liability Partnership

Company (L3C)
Also in early 2007, in North Carolina, State Senator Jim Jacumin introduced
legislation that would create a new organizational identity: a low-profit, lim-
ited liability partnership company (L3C). Developed by the Mary Elizabeth
& Gordon B. Mannweiler Foundation CEO Robert Lang—with help from
116 Landrieu, keynote address, New York University Stern School of Business Berkeley Center for Entre-
preneurial Studies Fourth Annual Conference of Social Entrepreneurs, April 13, 2007.
117 Ibid.

Marcus Owens, a partner in Caplin & Drysdale and former head of the
Exempt Organization Division of the IRS—L3C is an organizational type
that recognizes the unique blending of the three sectors. L3Cs operate as pri-
vate enterprises, yet must have charitable or educational purposes, no signifi-
cant purpose of income or appreciation of property, and no express political
or legislative advocacy mission.118 The primary purpose of the L3C is to allow
profit-making partnerships to nonetheless gain access to philanthropic funds,
through a little-used but already established vehicle called Program Related
Investments or PRIs.119 Establishing the L3C would also give low-profit-
market social entrepreneurship in North Carolina the added recognition and
credibility of a new, distinctive organizational form.120
Girl Scouts of the USA’s Challenge and Change:

Challenge Yourself, Change the World
In 2006 the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided funding to the Girl
Scouts of the USA to develop a new national program to strengthen rural
communities through teen leadership. The program was developed through
a unique collaboration between the Learning Innovation and Technology
Consortium and Girl Scouts of the USA. The program “Challenge and
Change: Challenge Yourself, Change the World” teaches teenage girls
how to become social entrepreneurs, and it has been implemented in more
than 20 states. It begins with a five-day retreat where girls learn leadership,
problem-solving, and entrepreneurial skills through a comprehensive multi-
media curriculum. They learn to apply the strategies of successful social entre-
preneurs by watching and analyzing social entrepreneurs in action, including
those profiled in The New Heroes, a PBS documentary series about social
entrepreneurs from around the world. To bring the topic closer to home, girls
118 To be designated an L3C, an organization must satisfy the following requirements: (1) the entity
significantly furthers the accomplishment of one or more charitable or educational purposes within the
meaning of section 170(c)(2)(B) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, and would not have
been formed but for the entity’s relationship to the accomplishment of charitable or educational purposes;
(2) No significant purpose of the entity is the production of income or the appreciation of property; pro-
vided, however, that the fact that an entity produces significant income or capital appreciation shall not,
in the absence of other factors, be conclusive evidence of a significant purpose involving the production
of income or the appreciation of property; and (3) No purpose of the entity is to accomplish one or more
political or legislative purposes within the meaning of section 170(c)(2)(D) of the Code, as amended.
119 Lang, “Charitable Returns.”
120 The “branded” L3C would also provide a basis for the issuance of commercial paper that could be
sold to a wide variety of investors, as foundations (under PRI rules) would absorb the highest level of risk,
making the remaining investment tranches attractive to additional investors at attractive rates of return.

also take field trips to meet social entrepreneurs in their own local communi-
ties. Challenge and Change teaches girls skills that will help them to identify
community problems, recognize and build on local assets, design sustainable
solutions, and implement their own action plans.
As social entrepreneurship begins to capture the attention of policy
makers, the research here also suggests a number of levers that could guide
government in further efforts to strategically support social entrepreneurship,
in addition to the examples provided by the initiatives described above. These
include certification programs like the U.S. Small Business Administration’s
initiative focused on promoting business within Historically Underutilized
Business Zones, or HUBZones.121 As City Year Co-Founder Alan Khazei
has pointed out, this type of program could serve as a model for encouraging
social entrepreneurs to scale their approaches in historically difficult areas:
“Government could help to bring high-performing social entrepreneurs to
needy areas by establishing a special matching fund: social entrepreneurs
who choose to operate in targeted areas would be eligible for additional fund-
ing, for example, matching two to one the funds raised privately.”122 Another
potential lever is the reallocation of public financing, as exemplified by the
use of public funding to encourage the development of charter schools that
exercise increased autonomy in their programming, in exchange for increased
accountability in terms of academic results and fiscal practices. According to
Chris Gabrieli, 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate and chairman of
the education think tank, Mass2020, “Charter school policy opened the door
for literally hundreds of social entrepreneurs to try their hands at making a
difference on the achievement gap. It has created thousands of schools, rang-
ing from extraordinary successes through mediocrity down to abject failures,
with experimentation and learning all along the spectrum.”123
Finally, government could look to recent growth-fund approaches
that have developed proven methodologies for scaling the success of social
entrepreneurs that government could learn from and participate in. In the
last decade, two such approaches to fund for-profit and nonprofit social
entrepreneurs have emerged. The first, sometimes referred to as venture or
121 U.S. Small Business Administration, “HUBZone,” https://eweb1.sba.gov/hubzone/internet/general/

whoweare.cfm#3.
122 Alan Khazei, (co-founder, City Year), interview with the author, May 29, 2007.
123 Chris Gabrieli, (chairman, Mass2020), interview with author, June 11, 2007.

engaged philanthropy, combines grant making and management assistance
for nonprofit social entrepreneurs, while the second, sometimes called social
venture capital, makes debt and equity investments to for-profit organizations
acting on what this chapter calls low-profit-market opportunities.124 Both
approaches borrow heavily from the private sector’s venture-capital practices,
where initial investment decisions are typically measured against the organi-
zation’s past history and a business plan that describes the next three to five
years of growth, with clear indicators to measure success.
The early examples of government support for social entrepreneurship—
along with the additional levers available to policymakers—suggest that gov-
ernment support of social entrepreneurship has the potential to be as diverse
and innovative as the field itself. At the same time, the nonprofit sector is
beginning to find new and innovative ways to collaborate with government in
supporting social entrepreneurship. The Aspen Institute, most recently with
the help of the Social Enterprise Alliance, has convened several meetings
aimed at exploring new organizational forms that policymakers could create.
Harvard University’s Initiative on Social Enterprise has also held a meeting on
this topic. Another recent initiative from within the nonprofit sector is New
Profit, Inc.’s Action Tank, launched in 2006 to develop, pilot, and promote
new nonpartisan approaches to public problem solving that tap the principles
and results of social entrepreneurship to create broad-scale social change. The
Action Tank seeks to play a leadership role in closing the gap between policy-
makers and social entrepreneurs at the local, state, and federal levels.
These new initiatives constitute the first wave of what is likely to be a
flood of new experiments in governmental support of social entrepreneur-
ship—as that support on the local, state, and federal levels transitions from
one of occasional, one-time support to a strategic, long-term strategy for
leveraging the successes of social entrepreneurs into enduring solutions for
the nation’s most pressing social problems. Government leaders and social
entrepreneurs have an opportunity to generate enormous social benefit, if
124 Some of the venture-philanthropy groups best known for this new approach that government could
learn from and work with include Atlantic Philanthropies, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, New
Profit Inc., Robin Hood. Foundation, Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, the Skoll Foundation,
Venture Philanthropy Partners, and the Wallace Foundation. Some of the best known social venture capi-
tal groups include Acumen Fund, Good Capital, Investors Circle, and the New Schools Venture Fund;
the last one actually provides both grants and investment to nonprofits and for-profits in the education
sector. More recently, super-growth funds have emerged attempting to raise tens of millions of dollars for
social entrepreneurs much like investment banks for private companies, including Sea Change Capital,
started by former Goldman Sachs executives, and Growth Philanthropy Capital.

they can find ways to work in true strategic partnership. Americans may
already be witnessing the beginnings of what City Year Co-Founder Alan
Khazei calls “a new role for government in the 21st century. Increasingly,
government will be working in partnership with the other two sectors, and,
in particular, leveraging social entrepreneurs.”125
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From The Small Business Economy: A Report to the President, 2007,

by The Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy.

The Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is

ii Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Chief Economist and Director of Economic Research

iv Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Keith Artin Katherine Freund Jon Schnur

Social Entrepreneurship and Government v

Susan Cippoletti R. Todd Johnson David Roll

Cheryl Dorsey Alan Khazei JB Schramm

Bill Drayton Marguerite Kondracke Eric Schwartz

David Eisner Robert Lang Billy Shore

vi Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Beth Anderson Milton Little Bill Turenne

Social Entrepreneurship and Government vii

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 1

Introduction: Social Entrepreneurship Enters

3 Bush, State of the Union 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070123-2.html.

2 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 3

8 Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Summit Report, http://schwabfound.org/the.

4 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 5

6 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

What is Social Entrepreneurship?

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 7

8 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

The Private Sector

29 Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development.

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 9

Public Sector/Government Voluntary Sector/Nonprofits

The Public Sector

10 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

36 Gruber, Public Finance and Public Policy.

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 11

The Nonprofit/Voluntary Sector41

12 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Blurring Sectors: Trends Creating Fertile Ground for Social

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 13

Opportunities to provide public

Public-private Corporate social

and competition Demands for

and nonprofit service Gaps in public

5.15 million people.50 In another trend, following recent corporate scandals

50 Light, Fact Sheet on the New True Size of Government, 4.

14 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

52 Osborne and Gaebler, Reinventing Government, chapter 1.

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 15

Social Entrepreneurship Emerges at the Nexus

59 Goldsmith and Eggers, Governing by Network, 23.

16 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

Response to Market Failures

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 17

No Market Limited Market Low-profit Market

18 Social Entrepreneurship and Government

68 Ashoka, “What is a Social Entrepreneur?” http://ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur.

Social Entrepreneurship and Government 19

20 Social Entrepreneurship and Government