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"Committed and innovative people change the world. Our mission is to enable youth and adults to solve challenges with sustainable, innovative solutions. The world needs genuine innovators-those who dedicate themselves to an ideal, draw from many domains, and reframe challenges as opportunities. Innovators not only move mountains but often change the entire landscape. That landscape defines the potential available to the rest of the community. When focused on important problems innovations can result in enormous social good. We plan to increase the potential for innovative solutions in areas where good ideas are needed most. Springboard Innovation was formed in 2004 to help fill the gap of learning and support for those who wish to make a difference in a new way. We create opportunities for community members to learn how to launch social ventures, provide ongoing consultancies, help them network with others, help them get seed funding, and work to build a supportive ecosystem in the cities where they live. Springboard works through four core strategies. These work together to offer both a sequenced continuum of experience and a cycle of programs and resources that allow leaders and supporters to connect at any point, nurturing community-led community change. "

Our mission is to help companies reach their highest potential in the context of the next paradigms in business. At shiftalliance™, we advise businesses on how to innovate their entire business model through the lens of meaningfulness, the key value driver of the 21st century. shiftalliance shows a business-any business-how to improve profitability with minimal capital investment from the companies we serve. We are experts in powerful, low-cost ways of discovering new ideas to increase the value your company generates, motivating a company's work force, inspiring its leaders and attracting new customers. Whether you're a leader seeking to revitalize the ROI of an existing business or a venture capitalist needing to optimize a business in your portfolio, shiftalliance™ can help you discover the innovation opportunities to enhance your business model and align your company with emerging shifts of the 21st century. Our singular approach comes from the combination of rigorous business analysis + design thinking + awareness mindset leadership coaching to unlock the full potential of your strategy, leaders and performance. We coach your people to lead and embed meaningfulness into your culture. We became a B Corp immediately upon discovering B Corporation. We had collected 231+ better practices in business and realized that B Lab was promoting many of these practices through their certification and legislation initiatives. We were thrilled to discover that companies could be recognized for their meaningful practices and potentially even benefit financially (through tax breaks) as a result of their commitment to socially responsibility. Most management and specialist consulting firms address business, organization development, innovation, brand or sustainability. We use the lens of meaning, the value driver of the 21c, to assess, innovate and embed all of the above into meaningful business models and unleash greater value for all stakeholders and the enter

While social entrepreneurs have emerged in every sector and nearly every market, they often lack the high-level business, management, and strategy skills that have propelled the private sector to its remarkable growth. We aim to leverage our expertise in management education and training to develop and deliver the world's best executive training for social entrepreneurs. Our pioneer ISEP program, launched in 2005 and running annually in both our Fontainebleau and Singapore campus, has established itself as the most valuable for program for leading social entrepreneurs and the entry ticket into a valuable life-long network of support and knowledge sharing. More fundamentally, we aim to organize our faculty and bring our academic expertise to bear upon the unique challenges faced by social entrepreneurs. Our research agenda aims to foster a two way dialogue: advanced management thinking is applied to the challenges of social entrepreneurs while the innovative approach of social entrepreneurs is leveraged back into business research and corporate practice. The social entrepreneurship initiative is housed under both INSEAD's Social Innovation Centre and the Rudolf and Valeria Maag International Centre for Entrepreneurship. The Social Innovation Centre is a premier hub for research and learning on the connection between business and society. The Maag Centre is the catalyst at INSEAD for innovations in entrepreneurship research, teaching and outreach.

"Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a nonprofit organization that creates and evaluates solutions to social and development problems, and works to scale up successful ideas through implementation and dissemination to policymakers, practitioners, investors and donors. Primary Objectives Innovate: Develop innovative solutions to poverty and policy problems worldwide. Use frontier knowledge from economics, psychology and public health. Evaluate: Conduct randomized controlled trials to evaluate public policies. This provides the highest quality and most reliable answers to what works and what does not. Our evaluations seek to generate insight into why particular strategies work -- not just whether they work -- so as to make the findings useful for scale-up and replication in other settings and countries. Replicate: Replicate evaluations in multiple settings. We can learn from one evaluation, but we can learn much more about what to do after seeing replications of similar interventions in multiple settings, and learn when ideas work best, and when they do not. Communicate: Communicate lessons to donors and implementers. The ultimate aim of IPA is to help resources be allocated to effective programs and policies. IPA's communication strategy targets both donors, to help guide them to programs and ideas that have been proven effective, as well as to organizations, to help guide their programming decisions towards more effective ideas and implementation strategies. We do this through non-technical communication on individual studies and sets of studies, as well as through synthesis articles and conversations that frame key policy issues and present reliable evidence to help guide development practitioners, policymakers, investors and donors towards better decisions and allocation of resources. Scale: Scale-up of effective solutions. This includes hands-on technical assistance or direct implementation if appropriate, as well as extensive communication and advoc

"Social entrepreneurship involves the marriage of good business principles with the desire to solve social problems, improve the environment, and empower communities. It's all about creating double- and triple-bottom line companies that do well while doing good. In these Social Innovation Conversations educational podcasts, hear how pioneers and innovators from all regions and walks of life are helping our world through socially motivated businesses ranging from the smallest and most localized efforts to large and ambitious enterprises. Fuel yourself with inspiration and sophisticated advice as to how you can make social entrepreneurship a part of your own life."

"cosi10 is a transformative event for social innovators, social entrepreneurs and their social ventures that's happening all over the world in the second half of 2010. * A simple, self-organizing face to face unconference event. cosi10 participants come together under the guidance of a local host who follows the cosi10 unconference event guide. Through that process, participants network and learn from each other in dynamic collaborative conversation (in their local languages) about impact strategies, sharing resources for developing our skills, and planning what it takes to build thrivable social innovations and revenue models. The participants co-create the story of what happened offline in the online event space at ned.com, where other cosi10 participants from around the world can respond, interact and connect around common purpose. Learn more about the cosi10 Unconference Format"

"Through our renowned Institute for Social Innovation, continuing education programs and networking opportunities, StartingBloc brings the latest innovations in corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship to emerging leaders."

"NBIS, the Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability is the northwest nonprofit that delivers expertise, education, and networking opportunities to business professionals who are leading their companies and communities toward profitable sustainability. NBIS members are companies, organizations and individuals committed to aligning their business practices with the values that sustain prosperous companies, thriving ecosystems and valued quality of life. "

"Ashoka is the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs-men and women with system changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems. Since 1981, we have elected over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 60 countries. With our global community, we develop models for collaboration and design infrastructure needed to advance the field of social entrepreneurship and the citizen sector. Our Fellows inspire others to adopt and spread their innovations - demonstrating to all citizens that they too have the potential to be powerful changemakers."

"London Creative Labs is a Social Business committed to ensuring decent work for everyone. It uses a unique and evolving combination of collaboration and business model innovation to generate new business opportunities that provide and/or enable work."

The Feast Conference gathers the world's greatest innovators from across industries and society to empower, inspire and engage each other in creating world-shaking change. But we're doing something a little different -- we ask those who can afford to pay higher prices to micro-sponsor The Feast, which allows us to offer fellowships to awe-inspiring vanguards whose brains get them where their wallets can't.

The School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) exists to provide training and opportunities to enable people to use their creative and entrepreneurial abilities more fully for social benefit. SSE supports individuals to set up new charities, social enterprises and social businesses across the UK. The SSE runs practical learning programmes aimed at helping develop the individual entrepreneur and their organisation simultaneously: our approach, and belief, is that social change is people-powered, and that the most valuable assets and resources we have are human ones. Each programme combines specific elements designed to provide an intensive, complete package of support that meets the needs of social entrepreneurs. This person-centred approach has been independently proven to create sustainable, thriving organisations that provide significant, lasting social and economic impact. The school was founded in 1997 by Michael Young (Lord Young of Dartington), a social innovator who'd previously launched the Consumers' Association, the Open University and around 40 other organisations. Following successful Millennium Awards programmes around the UK, the SSE expanded outside its base in Bethnal Green, London, and the network of SSEs around the UK continues to grow. Over 500 SSE Fellows have completed programmes around the country. SSE is a registered charity (1085465) and a company limited by guarantee (3900741).

"We encourage rigorous researchers to tackle the questions of enterprise solutions to poverty, and find the role models and artists that embody the experience of innovation in the world's poorest countries."

"GoodCompany Ventures catalyzes start-ups with innovative solutions to big, unmet social needs. We champion models that offer investors both financial return and social impact."

"The community formed during the 2 weeks is sustained virtually through an MBA Course and innovation partners who provide legal, systems, management, and other development services. Social entrepreneurs represent a powerful force for addressing some of the most daunting challenges of our time. They work for a more just and equitable world for all. With this shared vision the GSBI™ is a journey of mutual discovery and transformation for everyone involved."

About SOCAP10 Today a new form of capitalism is arising that recognizes both the power and efficiency of market systems and the ability to direct them toward social and environmental issues leading to a more balanced set of "returns." Early efforts by social entrepreneurs and enlightened investors have given rise to "Social Capital Markets" that include affordable housing, clean technology, microfinance, fair trade and many other socially focused enterprises. SOCAP10 convenes the major players and emerging thought leaders in the field to discuss innovative ways to expand those markets and bring socially responsible investing and the channeling of capital to SMEs and grassroots business organizations into the mainstream. We want to talk about where private sector dollars can work at venture start up speed without being encumbered by laborious engagement with government structures who have complex theories of change. We'd like to bring funders to the table to talk about how they can co-invest and what restraints there are around the capital, including expectations and desired impacts. We'd like to bring NGO's and entrepreneurs to the table to talk to the ways they are working with government to make their programs more effective. We want to bring government to the table to talk about the channels they are opening for private and public partnerships. We need to change the way we do business, as individuals, organizations and government institutions. We want to prove that it is possible to do well by doing good.

"YSEC is our response. It is a front-door to the social sector - a hub for connections, education and support of young people in social enterprise. It is also a challenge to all of us to become more entrepreneurial about meeting needs, more skilled as organizational managers, and more innovative in our approaches."

"During the day, The Hub is a dynamic, collision-rich work and meeting space designed by its Members for productivity and value exchange. At night, The Hub transforms into an event platform for member driven collaborations, lectures, screenings, innovation labs, and some of the most compelling and imaginative minds from around the world. "

"This blog is about Social Enterprise and Social Startups, based on the things I'm learning through advising and working with charities and social enterprises. The posts cover topics related to Social Enterprise and Third Sector development, including Social Innovation, Sustainability, Collaboration, Tips for Social Startups, SROI and Social Trends."

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.