By Olivia Allen Each year in the Social Enterprise Institute’s introductory social entrepreneurship class, Professor Shaughnessy designates a handful of high-impact social entrepreneurs to the proverbial “Mount Rushmore” of social entrepreneurs – a group of innovative social disruptors that have pioneered a fundamental impact. This currently includes Muhammad Yunus of Read more…
Let’s consider the question of what is the right or best kind of motivation for the rapidly growing class of social entrepreneurs. It’s a hot area, with a lot of new entrants, and not much in the way of rules and guidelines.
The idea of “impact investing” is gaining a great deal of attention these days, including in undergraduate education. While many institutions have offered classes in strategic philanthropy in recent years, and of course in traditional business investing for many, we have focused our efforts at SEI on developing educational programs for a new third way of investing. This new investment discipline involves socially minded investors providing capital to both for profit and non-profit enterprises that are committed to efficiently addressing social problems in both a sustainable and innovative way.