A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, or simply a nonprofit, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, as opposed to an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a profit for its owners. A nonprofit organization is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties. Depending on the local laws, charities are regularly organized as non-profits. A host of organizations may be nonprofit, including some political organizations, schools, hospitals, business associations, churches, foundations, social clubs, and consumer cooperatives. Nonprofit entities may seek approval from governments to be tax-exempt, and some may also qualify to receive tax-deductible contributions, but an entity may incorporate as a nonprofit entity without having tax-exempt status.
William Drayton is an American social entrepreneur. Drayton was named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's 25 Best Leaders in 2005. He is responsible for the rise of the phrase "social entrepreneur", a concept first found in print in 1972.
A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in financial, social and environmental well-being. This may include maximizing social impact alongside profits for co-owners.
Social entrepreneurship is an approach by individuals, groups, start-up companies or entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to a wide range of organizations, which vary in size, aims, and beliefs. For-profit entrepreneurs typically measure performance using business metrics like profit, revenues and increases in stock prices. Social entrepreneurs, however, are either non-profits, or they blend for-profit goals with generating a positive "return to society". Therefore, they use different metrics. Social entrepreneurship typically attempts to further broad social, cultural and environmental goals often associated with the voluntary sector in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care and community development.
Social innovations are new social practices that aim to meet social needs in a better way than the existing solutions, resulting from - for example - working conditions, education, community development or health. These ideas are created with the goal of extending and strengthening civil society. Social innovation includes the social processes of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques and also the innovations which have a social purpose—like activism, crowdfunding, time-based currency, telehealth, cohousing, coworking, universal basic income, collaborative consumption, social enterprise, participatory budgeting, repair Café, virtual volunteering, microcredit, or distance learning. There are many definitions of social innovation, however, they usually include the broad criteria about social objectives, social interaction between actors or actor diversity, social outputs, and innovativeness. Different definitions include different combinations and different number of these criteria. Transformative social innovation not only introduces new approaches to seemingly intractable problems, but is successful in changing the social institutions that created the problem in the first place.
New Profit is a nonprofit social innovation organization and venture philanthropy fund based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk, and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones.
A social venture is undertaking by a firm or organization established by a social entrepreneur that seeks to provide systemic solutions to achieve a sustainable, social objective.
Fábio Luiz de Oliveira Rosa is a Brazilian social entrepreneur whose initiatives have focused on rural electrification and the use of renewable energy sources.
The Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation was an office new to the Obama Administration, created within the White House, to catalyze new and innovative ways of encouraging government to do business differently. Its first director was the economist Sonal Shah. The final director was David Wilkinson.
Chetna Gala Sinha is an Indian social entrepreneur working to empower women in areas of rural India by teaching entrepreneurial skills, access to land and means of production.
Michele Jolin is an American social entrepreneur and policymaker. She is the CEO and co-founder of Results for America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to using evidence-based practices to get results-driven solutions. She is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on building a policy environment to support social entrepreneurship. She was appointed by President Obama in December 2010 to be a member of the White House Council for Community Solutions. In 2016, Jolin was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Rebecca Onie is the co-founder with Rocco J Perla of The Health Initiative, a nationwide effort to spur a new conversation about - and new investments in - health. In 2017, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine as a nationally recognized leader in the intersection of social determinants, population health, and healthcare delivery. Onie is also the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Emerita of Health Leads.
Darell Hammond is an American philanthropist, founder of the non-profit organization KaBOOM! that helps communities build playgrounds for children. Hammond also speaks at conferences and universities about his work and blogs on The Huffington Post. Hammond, who from the age of four enjoyed a happy childhood in a group home founded by Moose International, began building playgrounds in college, founding KaBOOM! with a friend in 1996. He has received multiple honors and awards for his work, including the President's Volunteer Service Award. In 2011, Hammond released his best-selling memoir, KaBOOM! How One Man Built a Movement to Save Play. He was listed in the Forbes 2011 list of the top 30 social entrepreneurs and was named as a "Health hero" by WebMD.
Jeroo Billimoria is an Indian social entrepreneur and the founder of several international NGOs. Her work has been featured in several books. Her most recent initiatives include Child and Youth Finance International (CYFI), which Jeroo founded in 2011, Aflatoun, Childline India Foundation and Child Helpline International. Her most recent initiative is Catalyst 2030.
Sylvia Banda is a Zambian business woman, restaurateur and social entrepreneur. She is an Ashoka fellow. Banda promotes local food use, choosing ingredients for her restaurant from local and small-scale farms. She started her own business, Sylva Professional Catering in 1986. By 2009, she had 16 restaurants in Lusaka. In 2014, she invested $105,000 in US dollars to open a food processing plant in Zambia.
Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) is a Canadian charitable organization and social enterprise that provides technology, entrepreneurship and leadership training programs for young people in East Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Canada. The organization's headquarters are in Ottawa, Ontario, with local operations around the globe. Since the organization was founded in 2001, DOT has directly affected more than 6,000 young people worldwide, who have gone on to reach over 1 million of their fellow community members. More than 90% of alumni, reportedly secure employment or start their own businesses within six months of completing DOT programming.
Policy entrepreneurs are individuals who exploit opportunities to influence policy outcomes so as to promote their own goals, without having the resources necessary to achieve this alone. They are not satisfied with merely promoting their self-interests within institutions that others have established; rather, they try to create new horizons of opportunity through innovative ideas and strategies. These persistent individuals employ innovative ideas and nontraditional strategies to promote desired policy outcomes. Whether from the private, public or third sector, one of their defining characteristics is a willingness to invest their own resources – time, energy, reputation and sometimes money – in hope of a future return. While policy entrepreneurs may try to block changes proposed by others, entrepreneurial activities usually seek to change the status quo rather than preserve it. It should be stressed, however, that although the literature has focused mainly on entrepreneurs who have led successful changes in policy, not all policy entrepreneurship ends in success. Finally, policy entrepreneurship is but one form of political participation. It is a process that involves individuals who are willing to take risks, identify policy problems and solutions, and use their political skills and timing to achieve a specified outcome". Most accounts and case studies address these individuals in a national context but the emergence of transnational policy entrepreneurs is increasingly apparent.
Social entrepreneurship in South Asia involves business activities that have a social benefit, often for people at the bottom of the pyramid. It is an emerging area of entrepreneurship that is supported by both the public sector and the private sector.
Gloria de Souza was a social entrepreneur and the first fellow of the international non-profit organization Ashoka. She was known for her work in educational reform and modern social entrepreneurship. She began working in Mumbai, India as a primary school teacher and in 1971, while she was teaching at a private Jesuit school, de Souza was prompted to make changes by adopting experiential and environmental methods in her curriculum. She noted that India's rate of brain drain was high at the time and wanted to change the educational system as a whole.
