What is Social Entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship in general refers to the act of setting up a business with the goal of making money and growing the company. Social entrepreneurship, however, refers to the act of setting up a cause and/or project, with the goal of solving an issue in society.

Social entrepreneurships usually come in the form of nonprofit organizations or charity work conducted by for-profit corporations. Moreover, instead of measuring success by seeing how much revenue they bring in, social entrepreneurships measure success by evaluating the effectiveness of their cause.

This type of venture can be broken down into three main categories:

• Social Entrepreneurship: The first category of social entrepreneurships focuses on the “social” part of the term. Ventures under this category aim to solve social issues in society. For example, many people have started nonprofits in the past few years to deal with the issue of racial discrimination and to improve the social statuses of various groups of people. Moreover, nonprofits that aim to help fight gender discrimination in the workplace would be considered social entrepreneurships.

• Cultural Entrepreneurship: This type of social entrepreneurship focuses on a cultural cause, such as bringing people of the same faith together or building a strong community for an ethnic minority. For example, New York City has many nonprofits dedicated to bringing members of the Jewish community together to observe their traditions. Furthermore, starting a club on a college campus dedicated to celebrating Persian culture would be considered a cultural entrepreneurship.

• Environmental Entrepreneurship: As you can probably imagine, this type of social entrepreneurship is dedicated to a cause related to the environment. As global warming has become a more prominent issue over the past few decades, more people have gotten involved in environmental entrepreneurship to raise awareness of climate change. Also, we have seen many clean energy startups over the past few years, which would fall under this category of entrepreneurship as well.

Social entrepreneurships have become increasingly popular in the United States over the past few decades. In fact, there are currently 1.5 million registered nonprofits in the US alone! So, if you are interested in starting a social entrepreneurship, you have plenty of examples from which to learn.

About the Author -- Joshua Ferdman

Joshua Ferdman is a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur, specializing in technology, finance, and real estate. He started working in the mortgage business at the age of 16 and hasn't stopped since. Joshua always said that the most important job you can ever have is phone sales. He writes about entrepreneurship, leadership, and succeeding in the professional world.