Are you or do you suspect you might be a social entrepreneur? If so what kind of
social entrepreneur are you? How does your social entrepreneurship manifest to solve local and
large scale problems across the world? In this video we're going to talk about four different
types of social entrepreneurs so you can think about which one you might [Music] be. Welcome
or welcome back! I'm Amber Melanie Smith I'm a social entrepreneur of my own kind I'm also a
nonprofit founder and executive director and I make these videos here to help people who
want to make a social impact in whatever form that takes nonprofits social entrepreneurship socially
conscious businesses and more I hope that you find that this video is interesting and helpful
and helps you solve the big question of what kind of social entrepreneur you are please give it a
like And subscribe to my channel for more content like this and if you're the kind of entrepreneur
that is thinking about starting a nonprofit check out my website FounderToFullTime.com,
where I have trainings all about starting a nonprofit developing a sustainable revenue and
fundraising plan Etc and of course check out my newsletter for change makers where I send out tips
strategy and funding opportunities you can find that link below this video all right let's start
with the big question who is a social entrepreneur well the US chamber of Commerce defines social
entrepreneurship as follows the process by which individuals startups and entrepreneurs
develop and Fund Solutions that directly address social issues so a social entrepreneur the person
who is engaging in social entrepreneurship is the innovator behind the funding or the development of
solutions that solve social issues in the words of Bill Drayton a social entrepreneur and the founder
of the organization called Ashoka innovators for the public whenever Society is stuck or has an
opportunity to sees a new opportunity it needs an entrepreneur to see the opportunity and then
turn that Vision into a realistic idea and then a reality and then indeed the new pattern across all
Society we need such entrepreneurial leadership at least as much in education and human rights
as we do in Communications and hotels this is the work of social entrepreneurs okay so you might be
wondering so then is everyone involved in a good cause a social entrepreneur no Paul C Light the
author of The search for social entrepreneurship argues that there is distinctive skills and
talents and abilities and expertise and practices that make social entrepreneurs different from
or distinctive from uh the work of of folks in Tradition additional public service so here's what
Mr light says about social entrepreneurs social entrepreneurs appear to make quite deliberate
decisions to solve social problems rather than simply stumbling into their work by accident
or circumstance they're often quite sober about their decision to attack a social problem and they
usually understand the consequences and challenges of challenging the status quo I also find that
social entrepreneurs are driven by a persistent almost unshakable optimism they persevere in
large part because they truly believe they will succeed in spite of messages to the contrary and
how is the work of social entrepreneurs different I turned to Greg D Gregory de founder and director
of the center for social entrepreneurship over at Duke University here's what Gregory says he
says that instead of just trying to all alleviate the symptoms of problems their organizations the
organizations of social entrepreneurs are trying to solve the underlying problems so we've talked
about this idea of Charity versus systemic change in past videos charity is helping the day-to-day
the feeding of the person who is hungry systemic Change is Going Upstream to figure out why are so
many people hungry and stopping the problem at the source so that's what social entrepreneurs
focus on to create significant and long-lasting changes Mr Dees goes on social entrepreneurs must
understand and often alter the social system that creates and sustains the problems in the
first place all right so now that we have a sort of foundation and recollection of what a social
entrepreneur even is and how they operate and how someone who would be called a social
entrepreneur might be doing things a little bit differently than you might see in traditional
public service or you know the basic percep cep of a traditional nonprofit um what are the
different types of social entrepreneur and which one might you be let's kind of get into that now
just like human beings social entrepreneurs are diverse in scope and background and there are
four types that have been defined by a gentleman named Dr Joe Johnson um he sort of categorizes
these as approaches to social entrepreneurship um that fit different circumstances or different
personalities or work sty of social entrepreneurs the first one is the community social entrepreneur
this is someone who is specifically focused on the local needs of a specific Community within
a small defined geographical area such as a city or a state now in past videos I've talked about
how social entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship and social Enterprises how it's about the model and
the approach less so the legal structure so keep in mind that you can be a nonprofit organization
or a for-profit organization um and still be considered a social entrepreneur it all depends
on which legal structure is going to be the best suited to solving the social problem that you aim
to solve as a social entrepreneur so when we're talking about these Community social entrepreneurs
these folks who are local and on the ground you might be thinking of um people who have started
organizations that do things like creating job opportunities for marginalized members of
society or building community centers that meet a specific need or um even micro Finance which is if
you're unfamiliar offering loans to people that the banks might typically Overlook perhaps due
to their income or status in society now this kind of social entrepreneurship usually starts with the
need to meet a very specific unmet need in a local community community and it often involves a lot of
Engagement and feedback from the very population being served so in a past video I talked about the
story of Briana how she went to um spend time and actually stayed on the streets for a month talking
to the unhoused population in her city in Florida and how she learned so much about that about what
their actual needs are right from their own mouths as opposed to making assumptions about what their
needs might be so let talk about the second type of social entrepreneur and the terminology gets
a little bit hazy here so I'm going to explain it a little bit um this the way Dr Joe Johnson calls
this type of entrepreneur is the nonprofit social entrepreneur but remember I just talked about how
you can be a social Enterprise organization as either a nonprofit or a for-profit so instead
I'd like to just kind of revise this and think of it as a not for-profit entity um that this
type of social entrepreneur has started and what that means is that all of the revenue brought in
from the activities of this organization 100% are reinvested back into the organization unlike with
the traditional business which would mean that uh you know profits are distributed to shareholders
um just like a traditional nonprofit if you are legally structured as a nonprofit organization
this is how you would be legally required to do things anyway all the money goes back into the
mission but you could hypothetically choose to be um a for-profit business that also just chooses
to reinvest everything back into the mission that doesn't mean you can't pay staff um all of these
organizations can have paid staff nonprofits for-profits Etc um it's just again is about
the benefits of the the legal structure that you choose so a couple of examples you might have seen
seen around or might come to mind um think of like a coffee shop or a restaurant who um specifically
employs people with special abilities or people who might not be have have access to jobs the
same way um others might have um so they're selling goods and services just like a typical
business but the social Enterprise the the social problem that they're solving is the lack of access
to employment for X type of Po population now if you are structured as a nonprofit organization uh
that means you can also accept tax deductible donations or grants or sponsorships as one of
the revenue streams for your organization the third type of social entrepreneur is
the transformational social entrepreneur and what makes this type of social entrepreneur different
is that they are specifically focusing on the Gap the market Gap specifically so what that
means is they want to provide a service that the government or or business or other nonprofits just
don't want to provide or can't provide for some reason they're focused on that Gap um so in doing
so they're going to create this transformational change because the results are usually focused on
um kind of what we were saying before changing the systems changing the ecosystems that the
problems exist in let's say for example that uh the ecosystem needs more social entrepreneurs
that's the problem that we're trying to solve for is if we had more social entrepreneurs then we
would have a lot more people out there solving these problems which I tend to believe by the
way um so an example of a transformational social entrepreneur is someone who'd come in and see that
need and create a network of social entrepreneurs and offer trainings to those social entrepreneurs
and grow that Network and then everyone in that Network impacts all the other people in their own
network so you're kind of changing the system on a broader scale than focusing on just one specific
geographical area another thing about these transformational social entrepreneurs is they
put some emphasis on building infrastructure into the organizations that they start knowing that
the organizations are going to need to be big scale large scale in order to make the type of
ecosystem systemic change that they're envisioning and the fourth type of social entrepreneur is the
global social entrepreneur this is someone who is specifically focused on large scale social
systems across many different countries to meet social needs globally this is a person who might
have experienced living in multiple countries or experiencing lots of different cultures someone
who has their sort of finger on the pulse of how needs might exist and show up in different
cultural and geographical scenarios and so they might be likely to start an organization again
it could be a nonprofit or a for-profit that specifically has an international reach and
contacts in many different countries a couple of real life examples on the for-profit the business
side uh is a company called Seventh Generation you might have heard of it they do eco-friendly
uh cleaning products for the household uh and they sell in many different countries a nonprofit
example would be perhaps an organization called Kiva that's KIVA and what they do is they provide,
they do micro financing they provide loans to um people starting small businesses or you know
supporting their family through business in their in their Community um they provide loans to help
them expand or grow or start their business bus so that they can become financially sustainable
for themselves one thing about these types of entrepreneurs is they might start with a focus
on a specific social issue like the examples I mentioned you know eco-friendly products or
micro Finance um but they are also more likely to partner or collaborate with social entrepreneurs
in other countries because quite frankly having something on this large of a scale requires a
network of collaborators and people who um know what's going on on the ground so I'd love to hear
the result if you are thinking of yourself as a social entrepreneur and I personally believe that
everyone has a little bit of social entrepreneur in them what kind of social entrepreneur of the
ones that I listed do you think that you would be share in the comments below as I mentioned before
if you're thinking of starting a nonprofit um or social Enterprise nonprofit check out
my website FounderToFullTime.com. I've got my resources there my online online trainings um
all about starting a nonprofit and developing a sustainable fundraising plan that can really
help you out I also have a newsletter for change makers which of course includes you
uh where I send out opportunities and tips and strategies and funding information occasionally
when I come across that uh you can subscribe with the link below this video and opt out
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social entrepreneurs socially conscious Business Leaders all sorts of folks and I hope you can
join us and join in the great conversations that we're having there and I'll see you next time!
bye