New Year's Resolution: Be a Social Entrepreneur

Do you have a New Year’s resolution? Do you dream of establishing a viable business that also has a positive social impact? Make it your resolution, then, to become a social entrepreneur.

What exactly is a social entrepreneur? According to Wikipedia, “A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change”. Social organizations can be set up as either for-profit or non-profit but the real bottom line is to make social improvements.

More and more information about social entrepreneurship is being disseminated. For example, on December 4, 2007, The Globe and Mail featured a special section called “Report on Social Entrepreneurs”. To view these articles, either go to The Globe and Mail website and search for “social entrepreneurs” or search the online databases at your local public library; note that you will have to pay to view the articles directly from The Globe and Mail website. To save yourself some money, visit your local public library's website to see if they subscribe to an online database like the Canadian Periodicals Index (CPI.Q) which contains newspaper and magazine articles, often with the complete text and access is FREE. (It’s free because public libraries pay for access to databases for their customers’ use. Your library card number is your way in!) For example, click here to access the suite of databases that the Oakville Public Library subscribes to.

If you are seeking to establish an enterprise with social entrepreneurship as its foundation, consider contacting the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship to gain access to their incredible resources and networks.

For further reading on social entrepreneurship, check out what the New York Times calls “a bible in the field”: How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein, published in 2007 by Oxford University Press. (Tip: To save money, borrow it from your local public library! Like this - click here.)