Social Entrepreneurs – providing innovative solutions to pressing social problems using free-market principles

Established in 2005, The Center for Social-Profit Leadership is dedicated to serving and supporting the leadership requirements of innovative social entrepreneurs by providing access to the highest quality faculty composed of business, academic, leadership and social entrepreneurial professionals.

A raft of overwhelming social issues: drugs, violence, welfare, and homelessness besiege our communities, which collectively affect everyone’s prosperity. Since 1965, this country has spent well over a trillion dollars providing services into our communities to address these issues that have all failed – the issues continue and grow in scale. Doing more of the same is obviously not the answer. A new approach is required if we are to have any impact on the social issues plaguing our communities. Enter the social entrepreneur, dedicated to implementing innovative solutions to pressing social issues in our communities using free-market principles.

A Worldwide Boom of Social Entrepreneurs

With social entrepreneurial programs in universities sprouting up all over the country, and over 1.2 million social-profit organizations nationwide, The Center for Social-Profit Leadership has recognized that there is a wealth of need and opportunity to support the leadership and learning requirements of this community of social innovators. The CSPL will meet this opportunity by providing direct access to social entrepreneurs to the highest quality faculty composed of business, leadership, academic and social entrepreneurial professionals.

There are few who would argue that the social-profit organizations that are most effective in delivering the highest value to its constituencies are those that are run with the best business practices. Unfortunately, this notion often flies in the face of what many mission-driven social-profits want to believe. Social entrepreneurs understand that our old ways of doing business in the non-profit arena aren’t working and something new needs to be done.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term social entrepreneur, it refers to the use of free-market principles to address pressing social issues in an innovative fashion that both sustains and supports the operation. With federal, state and local government funding shrinking and an increased competition for an overwhelmed foundation system, social entrepreneurs have recognized that new approaches to addressing pressing social issues had to be established.