Group items tagged

The Academies for Social Entrepreneurship creates training and mentoring programs for sustainable, mission-based businesses. Our core program is Social Enterprise Academies. The Academies for Social Entrepreneurship plays the role of convener and catalyst, connecting the organizations and people needed to create, grow and celebrate social enterprises. SOCIAL ENTERPISE ACADEMIES ABOUT THE ACADEMY A Social Enterprise Academy creates an eco-system of support that nurtures entrepreneurship and innovation in non-profit organizations. Its goals are to: * Enable non-profit organizations to develop the skill sets and resources that will enable them to attract growth capital and increase revenue from earned, rather than donated income. * Build overall organizational capacity. Academies enable non-profits to improve organizational performance by applying business practices and analytical thinking to their everyday operations. * Create community-based change in the broader local non-profit marketplace by promoting convergence between the best practices of business and philanthropy. IMPACT OF THE ACADEMY To date, our unique combination of training, mentoring & "fast pitch" plan competition has: * Expanded capacity in 126 non-profit organizations; * Utilized the mentoring talents of more than 100 business men and women ; * Produced millions of dollars in new investment and earned income streams. 90% of those participating in one of our business plan competitions say that it had a significant positive impact and 65% have launched or expanded ventures which generate new income for their agencies within a year. Academies are currently planned or under way in OrangeCounty and Los Angeles and San Diego counties (California) and in Las Vegas.

"Entrepreneur Commons is a platform to support entrepreneurs through self-help groups and loans. The fund is managed by a not-for-profit social network of entrepreneurs - a support platform that can scale, and that also provides a way to screen deals, based on inclusion of every entrepreneur into the process rather than exclusion through a competitive process. It is especially useful to social entrepreneurs, for whom the regular funding processes do not really work. And it simplifies the investment decision for social investors because success can easily be measured - when the beneficiary businesses are social businesses and loans (with rates that can be benchmarked against market returns) are paid off, then the social investor can be satisfied that he has done his part."

Goodzuma hosts 'challenges' by organizations and allows persons to 'pitch' solutions.