More on Running Nonprofits as Businesses, Connections to Social Entrepreneurship

In my “nonprofit” Google Alert today, I came across this article about running nonprofits as businesses. The article/biz blog from Milwaukee’s “Small Business Times” shows (through words, of course) the connections between social impact and the bottom line.

Social Enterprise (Social Entrepreneurship)

I recently came across an article on-line the other day that was talking about social entrepreneurship and the non-profit sector.  I thought this quote was really interesting I found on the website :  http://www.managementhelp.org/soc_entr/soc_entr.htm, “Nonprofits have to recognize that they’re businesses, not just causes. There’s a way to combine the very best of the not-for-profit, philanthropic world with the very best of the for-profit, enterprising world. This hybrid is the wave of the future for both profit and nonprofit companies.”

I never really looked at non-profits as being a business but, I guess if they want to succeeded then that’s what they have to make themselves.   It’s hard to have a “caring” mind-set, and a business mind set at the same time. I think this could be dangerous in a way because if you want people to think you are working for a good cause and you want them to donate money, you cannot deal with that as a business transaction.

I think that Social Entrepreneurship, can help any non-profit. But, not all non-profits need their help. Sometimes I think it will hurt them in the long run.

More on Social Entrepreneurship

Google Alerts strikes again. I tripped over this blog entry about a new book, Forces for Good, which also discusses “The Power of Unreasonable People.” Majority of discussion about these books relates to nonprofit organizations modeling them after “their for-profit counterparts.” Interesting read. Check it out.

— Prof. Harvey

Social Entrepreneurship

During our class discussion last week about Social Entrepreneurship, and Venture Philanthropy, I became really intrigued. In the hand out given in class, I learned that social entrepreneurs “act as the change agents for society, seizing opportunities others miss and improving systems, inventing new approaches, and creating solutions to change society for the better.” After looking into the subject a little more, I began to really support the idea of NPO working towards finding a solution to the cause of a specific problem rather than temporarily providing some relief. I also liked how the focus was primarily to make changes in society rather than just slapping band-aids on things that are broke. I really liked the quote by Bill Drayton, which states, “Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish, or teach how to fish. they will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry. ” Why just give a band-aid when you can potentially work towards preventing the scratch or fixing the problem. I believe if everyone supported this idea, many of society’s problems such as hunger and the homeless could potentially be eliminated. We just need to start focusing on the long-term goal and make changes, rather than simply providing a quick temporary solution.