SustainAbility, a consulting firm and think-tank that explores solutions for sustainable development, has released a new study on the positive effects of social entrepreneurship.

According to the report Growing Opportunity: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Insoluble Problems, a social entrepreneurs are:

…entrepreneurs whose new ventures (social enterprises) prioritize social returns on investment, i.e. improving quality of life for marginalized populations by addressing issues such as health, poverty, and education. One key reason why mainstream business needs to pay attention is that these people aim to achieve higher leverage than conventional philanthropy and NGOs, often aiming to transform the systems whose dysfunctions help create or aggravate major socioeconomic, environmental, and political problems.

SustainAbility surveyed 100 social entrepreneurs all over the world to gauge the different approaches to global health and environmental problems, and the challenges they face in their business ventures. Major challenges cited by respondents were access to capital, promotion and marketing of programs and services, and not enough opportunities to work with experts and other businesses.

Given these results, SustainAbility has made recommendations for governments and businesses to help in fostering the success of small entrepreneurs including pathways to funding and creating partnerships. They also map out different phases of funding, and the stages of evolution of an entrepreneur's business.

This report gives the global development community a better understanding of what problems social entreprenuers face. It also gives evidence to larger, established companies that corporate social responsibility continues to grow and provides new avenues of participation in this area.

SustainAbility