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social entrepreneur

Sep 08

The doer and the payer: A simple approach to scale

By Feature, Fundraising

By Kevin Starr and Laura Hattendorf, Mulago Foundation, Stanford Social Innovation Review

At the Mulago Foundation, we obsess on the notion of social impact that goes to scale. Since we’re usually willing to pay for lunch, people often come to talk about “going to scale” and “scaling up our work.” Most of the time, the word “growth” would better capture what they have in mind. Growth is a fine thing, but scale is what solves problems, and so scale is what we look for. When we talk about “going to scale,” this is what we mean:

You’ve got a proven model at big scale — the thing you do. Who’s going to replicate — do — it, and who is going to fund that replication?

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Jun 16

A social entrepreneur transforms nonprofit to profit-making

By Feature, Sustainability

By Esha Chhabra, contributor, The New York Times |

In 2013, The New York Times published a case study about a social entrepreneur, Saul Garlick, discussing what kind of legal structure would be best for his enterprise, ThinkImpact, which encourages entrepreneurship in third-world communities. He fundamentally had three options: continue as a nonprofit, go commercial, or find some sort of hybrid route.

The Times asked three experts which option would be best. Pamela Hartigan, director of the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford, who is constantly advising aspiring social entrepreneurs, suggested that Mr. Garlick hop off the “treadmill of donor dependency.” Jonathan Lewis, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a social entrepreneur himself, also suggested going commercial. Lastly, Shivani Siroya, an entrepreneur who runs InVenture, a hybrid organization, noted that it was possible to raise revenue even as a nonprofit and thus suggested that ThinkImpact should not dismiss a nonprofit model too quickly.

Many commenters agreed with Ms. Siroya, suggesting that Mr. Garlick use revenue streams as a nonprofit to raise money rather than going purely commercial. Others, however, noted that the nonprofit field is evolving and a profit-making enterprise can be driven by social impact and not the bottom line. Several readers pointed to new legal structures like a benefit corporation or L3C, which incorporate social impact into the core mission of a company. The Times contacted Mr. Garlick for a follow-up conversation, which has been condensed and edited, to see which option he chose.

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