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Social Enterprise

Social Enterprise is a new and evolving field. There are myriad definitions of social enterprise, social entrepreneurs, and social investing but at the core of each is a philosophy that encourages individuals who have an entrepreneurial attitude, drive, and vision to work toward achieving long-term social change.

Great Bay understands it takes more than money to help entrepreneurs working in this uniquely social vein. The foundation believes that it is important to support its grantees’ energy by providing intellectual capital – strategic business principles that help entrepreneurs to leverage innovation – access to community resources, and a dynamic grantee network.

We are delighted to have an opportunity, here, to extend those resources to a broader online audience so that others might learn from our experience and so that members of this virtual community might contribute new insights to our network.

The Great Bay Foundation specifically funds nonprofit social entrepreneurs' revenue-generating efforts: those who are creating and/or operating revenue-generating projects that focus on making the organization economically self-sufficient, or are moving in that direction; and those whose projects help individuals living on the edges of society become more self-reliant and less dependant through the acquisition of skills, improvement of their faculties, training, jobs, etc.

Our grantees include innovators such as Katherine Freund, founder of the Independent Transportation Network and Executive Director of ITNAmerica, who was featured in a Wall Street Journal article, "12 People Who Are Changing Your Retirement: These pioneers are shaping the way Americans will live, work and play later in life."

And Robert Chambers, Executive Director of BonnieCLAC. Robert was a Civic Ventures' Purpose Prize finalist and was also recently featured on David Brancaccio’s PBS program NOW "Encore Careers: A Worthy Life Begins at 60."

Our Grantee Network includes annual conferences for all our grantees (past and current), potential grantees, and friends of the foundation, bi-monthly site visits, and roundtable luncheons where small groups of grantees and outside experts discuss issues and strategies that are of concern to all. For the past ten years, the Great Bay has hosted an annual, by invitation only, conference. Past speakers include such world renown experts as: Clara Miller, President and CEO of the Nonprofit Finance Fund; Paul C. Light, Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service; Alex Nicholls, Lecturer in at the Said School of Business, Oxford University and Leader of the Skoll World Forum Social Entrepreneurship; Billy Shore, Founder and Executive Director of Share Our Strength; and Rushworth Kidder, author and founder of the Institute for Global Ethics. Their interactive presentations are designed to help attendees: better understand social enterprise history and theory: evaluate innovative initiatives in a broad context; and assess their programs' legitimacy and social impact. Last year, we also added a segment on the possibilities of virtual networks for social enterprise led by Victor d'Allant, Executive Director of the Skoll Foundation's online portal Social Edge.

Recent articles in the New York Times extoll the virtues of social enterprise and social entrepreneurs. In January 2008 Nicholas Kristof published "The Age of Ambition" and "Do-Gooders with Spreadsheets." In May 2008, Tom Friedman published, "Who Will Tell the People?"

Further information on Social Enterprise can be gleaned from our frequently updated Digital Library, which includes profiles of other social entrepreneurs, theory and anlysis from experts in this evolving field, and practical tools related to marketing, financial planning, evaluation, and assessment.