Monday 25 March 2013

Social Entrepreneurship Education on the Rise

The Harvard Business Review Blog Network reports results from a survey on how supply of classes, cases, and students in the area of social entrepreneurship has increased over the past twenty years. The data was collected by the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initaitive and concerns only HBS courses and cases.

Read more: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/02/the_rise_of_social_entrepreneu.html

Thursday 14 March 2013

Accelerator Program Launched for Danish Social Enterprises

The Danish Social Capital Fund has just launched a "Social Growth Program" aimed at developing early stage social economy businesses. The accelerator program is an intensive development 6-month period during which early stage social enterprises are given advise on how to grow and develop their business.

The program contains:
  • An experienced and dedicated business developer who is active in each team 1-2 days a week, who helps to develop and test new business opportunities and spar with the management 
  • Targeted matchmaking to municipalities, companies and organizations and possibly also funds, banks and potential investors
  • Camps and workshops 
The Social Growth Program is conducted by the Danish Social Capital Fund, the Centre for Social Economy and Symbion. It is completely free to participate in the process carried out for a total of 12 social enterprises in two rounds: six participating companies during the period from May to October 2012 and 6 from November 2013 to May 2014.

To learn more about the Social Growth Program and the opportunity to participate, you can sign up networking event in the calendar.

More information: info@socialokonomi.dk

Wednesday 13 March 2013

European Parliament approves new rules for social investments

The social enterprise sector in Europe has taken a welcome turn towards professionalization this week, when the European Parliament voted in favor of new rules for a label for European Social Entrepreneurship Funds.

Under the new rules a label for ”European Social Entrepreneurship Funds“ would be created allowing investors to identify funds that focus on investing in European social businesses. 

Managers of social entrepreneurship funds need to prove that they are meeting certain requirements (namely that 70% of the capital received from investors are spent in supporting social businesses), upon which the label will be awarded. The rules also contain provisions on required disclosure so that investors can receive sufficient information on each investment.

Given the highly dynamic sector it will be interesting to see in how far the rules will be able to actually achieve  their goal of helping to better measure and communicate the social performance of such funds. Preliminary insights from social impact investors have shown both the complexity of meaningful social impact assessments and the cost of such activities.