This month the Danish Social Capital has published its first investment - in Specialisterne ApS. The fund (which was mentioned earlier on this blog) is Denmark's first social venture fund that invests capital and skills in social entrepreneurs and businesses that solve social problems. The fund wants to help companies to grow - and thus generate the fullest possible social impact. The fund was established with 25 million DKK from TrygFonden and professional support from Accura and KPMG.

Read more: www.socialkapitalfond.dk 

CBS Students start Social Enterprise in Kenya

Have you ever thought about what women do who cannot afford pads or tampons? "All girls know that if you suddenly find yourself without anything and that time has come, you panic," says Maxie Mathiesen co-founder of Ruby Cup and alumna of the CBS Minor in Social Entrepreneurship. Women and girls living in developing countries face problems when they menstruate, because they cannot afford sanitary pads. Instead they use whatever they have at hand, such as bark, mud, newspaper, cloth, and pieces of mattress.

Ruby Cup wants to provide menstrual protection alternatives, which will not have negative environmental effects, and that are both available and affordable for women in developing countries. Ruby Cup was initiated and founded by three young women from Denmark and Germany. Veronica, Julie and Maxie met each other at Copenhagen Business School where they studied International Business and Politics, Sustainable Business, and Social Entrepreneurship. They all hold several years of international work experience in the fields of human rights, sustainable business/CSR, marketing, and trade and commerce. As young social entrepreneurial women, they are dedicated to making a difference for purpose and for profit.

In 2010, the idea has been selected as the winner in the CBS Social Entrepreneurship Minor class "Business Plan Writing for Social Enterprises". Since then Ruby Cup has gone from strength to strength. After raising over 100,000€ start capital in 2011 Ruby Cup has launched the company in Kenya. Just recently the team has been shortlisted as a finalist of the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) as well as Echoing Green. Good luck! Read more: http://www.ruby-cup.com.

Social Entrepreneurs at Davos

Social Entrepreneurship has reached the limelight for a quite a while now. So it is not for the first time that social entrepreneurs have been invited to Davos. Still it is encouraging to see that more initiatives get launched that want to help social entrepreneurs.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akhtar-badshah/meeting-the-new-social-en_b_1257547.html

Christmas Presents from Social Enterprises?

Still looking for a last minute gift? Social Enterprise UK has collected a number of social enterprise examples that offer Christmas presents with a social edge.

Go and check it out here:

http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/happy-christmas

CBS ranked in Top10 worldwide on Social Impact research

At CBS we are  happy to share a bit of self promotion. In the latest Aspen Institute's survey of global MBA programs CBS has been found to be world class when it comes to Social Impact research (just next to UC Berkeley and Columbia Business School two of the original Social Entrepreneurship schools). 

Read more about the Aspen rankings:

http://www.beyondgreypinstripes.org/ranking/top-10-list

Read more about social impact research at CBS:http://www.cbs.dk/cbsCSR

Lessons to be learned from ShoreBank's failure

This August one of the leaders in social enterprise funding had to close its doors. For 37 years ShoreBank Corporation has engaged in community development funding in the U.S. The Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) has now published an analysis of ShoreBank's failure.

Read more:
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/too_good_to_fail

And the winner is...

In last week's class our team of judges have selected the winner of this year's business plan writing class. The winning business plan was written by a team of students around Mikkel Kinnerup the co-founder of Tangerine District. In their submission the student team has developed a plan for providing the Tangerine District Software to Nigerian SMEs.

Read more about Tangerine here: http://www.tangerinedistrict.com/