Social Entrepreneurship

Under social entrepreneurship or social entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship refers to entrepreneurial activity, which wants to use innovative, pragmatic and long term for a substantial, positive change a society ( for so-called meta-economic overall objectives ). An entrepreneur who runs such an activity is called a Social Entrepreneur. Areas in which committed to a social entrepreneur, are, for example, education, environmental protection, job creation for people with disabilities, poverty reduction and human rights. The idea is for profit social entrepreneurs in the background, why conduct or support many of these entrepreneurs non-profit organizations.

The definition for Social Business ( German often uses the term social economy ) is fluid. Occasionally this is indeed understood as a special form of social entrepreneurship, but often the social business is in the hands of traditional charities, their spin-offs in the legal form of private enterprise, the concept of entrepreneurship but can not be true, since with high benefits and low risk working.

In some countries, social enterprises and social entrepreneurs to register and obtain thus a special status.

A stamped about in 2000 generic term for both social entrepreneurship as well as for eco - entrepreneurship is Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Entrepreneurship, short Sustainopreneurship.

The experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of social enterprise in the form of determining a social rate of return or the Social Impact are methodically little unified.

Features and forms

A social entrepreneur is an entrepreneur who

• Seeks to deal with a not or not yet adequately solved social task
• For the financial profit is not the focus or constitutes a means of achieving social purposes,
• Establish the values ​​of democracy and human dignity,
• Involving a suitable organization for the fulfillment of the task it has set itself, which seeks sustainable development for society,
• The interested persons seeking to motivate participation and
• Can acquire the necessary financial and material resources, without becoming dependent on large individual donors.

Characteristic of social enterprises is that tangible goals (ie, aspects of power production such as target direction and target group) dominate formal objectives such as cost recovery or liquidity. While some Social Entrepreneurs hold the goal of making profit and this through special social services - for example, the employment of unemployed - looking to achieve, represents the profit for others is only a means to achieve social purposes can. Other social enterprises are more in the tradition of cooperatives and emphasize the solidarity and self-help aspect.

Due to the special economic situation of social enterprise financing is often a particular challenge. On one hand, the potential returns for investors due to the revenue models of social enterprises are often limited, on the other hand, results from the " social return " for some types of investors, a special investment incentive. Since about 2003, there are in Germany venture capitalists for social enterprises (Social Venturing ).

A particular variant of social entrepreneurship is the social franchising. The most important differentiation from traditional franchises concerns the purpose of social franchising. Although it comes to spreading a business concept also in Social Franchising, are not uniform market presence to generate a high brand awareness and build a recurring customer base in the foreground, but as high a profit margin and the best possible satisfaction of social needs in the latter. An example is the chain store CAP.

Helga Hackenberg and Stefan Empter call in one of them in 2011 published anthology (Social Entrepreneurship - Social Business: to do For the Company) the phenomenon as ' nothing new ' ( " the strategies of the booming social entrepreneurship sector already " ) and social entrepreneurship as a conceptually and conceptually not yet defined ' phenomenon in the tension between economy, state and civil society '.

Performance measurement and impact monitoring

Social Entrepreneurs need their success or their social impact for investors and other stakeholders. that is, the (positive) effect on their social environment to prove. To measure the Social Return on Investment ( SROI ), there is no uniform reporting standards. Even the nomenclature is still fragmented. Ashoka, in collaboration with other partners developed the Social Reporting Standard ( SRS), which provides a framework for reporting. It should help to document the effect chain of programs and communicate. In addition, other essential elements of reporting, such as organizational structure and finances in an SRS report are systematically recorded.

Relevant in this context is the difference between output (eg, number of trained unemployed youth ) and outcome ( number of young people who actually get a job ). The main problem in determining the outcome or the Social Impact under a Impact Value Chain is the attribution, that is, the question of whether the output has really contributed to the achievement of objectives and what other factors have had an effect help or hinder the achievement of objectives. Furthermore, the question of aggregation is to answer, that is, it is the facts to determine whether the youths had also found without further employment.

The widespread assumption that the methods and standards of the private sector can be used to effect measurement is wrong primarily because of the typical social enterprises delay the effect. Alternatively, is often the Capacity Assessment Grid used to identify the performance of an organization basis of structural features, skills and other resources, and also the Social Enterprise Scorecard, an adaptation of the Balanced Scorecard, which also takes into account social long-term goals.

Maximum distribution of the benefits

An important aspect of the assessment of business models of social entrepreneurship is the question of its scalability. Here it comes the founders is not primarily a matter of keeping their competitive edge over others and thus to achieve a durable bond. Rather, it is desirable that positive social effects that have been successfully demonstrated by the individual social enterprises, will be disseminated in a short time in the company. Many social enterprises are aiming for, as quickly as possible to reach a critical mass of users and imitators, so that the desired effects through the " cloning" of the business model and other learning processes redistribute (so-called efficiencies of scale ). Such scaling processes can be achieved, inter alia, through expansion, with a high replicability of the model eg by franchising or simply by diffusion of knowledge; the persuasiveness of the founders plays an important role. Other factors include the management skills, the mobilization of resources, reputation, control of the partners and the costs of the transfer of the business model.

Promotion and Education

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship promotes social entrepreneurs, especially in Germany and Switzerland. As the first investment company in German-speaking promotes BonVenture Group since 2003 social entrepreneurs, where these are provided in addition to the person responsible social venture capital and consulting and network contacts. Countries with extensive activities and special training and advisory bodies in the field of social entrepreneurship are, inter alia, India, Italy, Brazil and Mexico, but also in the Nordic countries. Leading the way in the education of social entrepreneurs is, inter alia, the Tiimiakatemia founded in 1993 (Team Academy) at the Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences in southern Central Finland.

The annual since 2008 4Entrepreneurship - Entrepreneurial Impact International Summer School under the motto Billion Euro Project to Foster Societal Change the TU Munich entrepreneurship should be encouraged to find with the aim of providing solutions to global social problems. The specific goal is in small international and interdisciplinary teams to develop sustainable business ideas, generate, save or cost a billion euros. 2011, the establishment of the Social Entrepreneurship Academy SEA was announced a cooperation project of the four universities in Munich.

In autumn 2010 the German Federal Government has approved the promotion of social entrepreneurship as part of the National Engagement Strategy. Since 1 January 2012 there jointly by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs and the KfW Bank Group financing program for Social Entrepreneurship.

Since 2011, the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative offers & Foundation ( self) in Switzerland professionalization programs in the form of seminars devoted to social entrepreneurs. This is available here to promote, among other mentoring to participate contact with sources of funding and the ability of the business plan competition seif Awards.

Awards

Since 2013, the forgives seif a social entrepreneurship label in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Commission for Technology and Innovation. In addition, seif awards in the German speaking since 2011, is endowed with CHF 10,000 each seif awards in different categories.

Since 2012, the Enormously magazine awards in a competition for social enterprises prize money for the promotion of start-ups.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship awards the International Social Entrepreneur of the Year.

History

Can already be found in the history of many socially minded entrepreneurs, for example:

• Florence Nightingale, the founder of the Florence Nightingale Foundation and several medical schools,
• Robert Owen, the founder of the cooperative system
• Vinoba Bhave, the founder of India's land-grant movement
• Friedrich von Diergardt (1795-1869)

The term social entrepreneur was first used in the 1960s and 1970s in the English-language literature on social change. In the 1980s and 1990s, the term became widespread in the English-speaking world. This is partly due to the work of Bill Drayton, due to the founder of " Ashoka " to promote 's charitable entrepreneurs, but also to the use of the term by the British trend researcher Charles Leadbeater in his book The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur of 1997. From the 1950s to the 1990s, the British sociologist and politician Michael Young was a leading promoter and supporter of social economy enterprises. Therefore, he was the world in the 1980s by Professor Daniel Bell at Harvard University because of its role in the founding of over 60 organizations - including a number of schools for Social Entrepreneurs - referred to as the world 's most successful entrepreneur in the field of social economy enterprises. Young died in 2002, after he founded the Young Foundation in 2005 was named that sees its primary economic activity in the stimulation of social innovation in communities.

Since about 1998, the idea of ​​social entrepreneurship in Germany was popularized, especially by the founding took place this year, the Schwab Foundation through the World Economic Forum.

Since around 2005 organizations have emerged from social enterprises in many countries. In Switzerland, the working group Swiss social firms is ( ASSOF ) a representation of companies that work for people with disabilities or disadvantages in the labor market creates (at least 30 % share of employment ), while at least 50 % of their costs from the proceeds of products and services cover. On March 11, 2013, the dissolution of the Association, it was decided by June 2013 by the General Assembly.