The Mission-Driven Venture: Business Solutions to the World s Most Vexing Social Problems

Preface

Governments and nonprofit organizations everywhere have compassionately invested billions in social services, yet, wherever we look, we still face stubborn challenges in education, health care, poverty, unemployment, and the environment. Those challenges are tougher than ever: the world has not yet recovered from unprecedented economic shocks, government spending is unsustainable, and charitable resources are inadequate to fund the deepening problems too many face. While public- and social-sector programming has improved the lives of countless people, so, increasingly, have market-based business initiatives.

Alone and in combination with government and philanthropic efforts, business strategies are effectively addressing the most intractable of social problems. For-profit, social-purpose businesses are defining success in terms of both financial and social returns. Nonprofits are becoming entrepreneurial, supplementing charitable donations and government grants with revenue earned by the businesses they own and run, instrumentalities of mission in their own right. Progressive nonprofits are partnering with each other, and even with for-profits, breaking down cultural barriers, leveraging their competencies, and gaining economies of scale.

A growing number of passionate social entrepreneurs are deploying invested capital to test and develop business opportunities intended to drive positive social change. They are the “restless people,” as journalist David Bornstein describes ...