Social entrepreneurship is the work of a social entrepreneur. 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. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.

History

The terms social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship were first used in the literature on social change in the 1960 and 1970s . It came into widespread use in the 1980s and 1990s, promoted by Bill Drayton the founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, , and others such as Charles Leadbeater . From the 1950s to the 1990s Michael Young was a leading promoter of social enterprise and in the 1980s was described by Professor Daniel Bell at Harvard as 'the world's most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises' because of his role in creating over 60 new organizations worldwide, including a series of Schools for Social Entrepreneurs in the UK.

Although the terms are relatively new, social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship can be found throughout history. A list of a few historically noteworthy people whose work exemplifies classic "social entrepreneurship" might include Florence Nightingale (founder of the first nursing school and developer of modern nursing practices), Robert Owen (founder of the cooperative movement) and Vinoba Bhave (founder of India's Land Gift Movement). During the 19th and 20th centuries some of the most successful social entrepreneurs successfully straddled the civic, governmental and business worlds - promoting ideas that were taken up by mainstream public services in welfare, schools and healthcare.

Current practice

One well known contemporary social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus, founder and manager of Grameen Bank and its growing family of social venture businesses, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. The work of Yunus and Grameen echoes a theme among modern day social entrepreneurs that emphasizes the enormous synergies and benefits when business principles are unified with social ventures. In some countries - including Bangladesh and to a lesser extent the USA - social entrepreneurs have filled the spaces left by a relatively small state. In other countries - particularly in Europe and South America - they have tended to work more closely with public organizations at both the national and local level.

In the UK in 2002 seven leading not for profit organisations established UnLtd - The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs. It holds a £100 million endowment especially to invest in social entrepreneurs in the UK. UnLtd provides individuals with cash awards and practical support that includes coaching, training and networking opportunities to help develop community projects. UnLtd Ventures is the in-house consultancy division of UnLtd and focuses on a number of outstanding social entrepreneurs, providing them with business support and helping them to scale up or replicate their organisations or get investment ready. Another of their operations, UnLtd Research, is fast becoming the world's primary source of evidence and thinking around Social Entrepreneurship. Its central purpose is to lead the global business, public policy and academic debates about the role of Social Entrepreneurship in community regeneration, employment and growth strategies.