ENTREPRENEURSHIP
national programme in the UK aimed at turning social science research into a social venture. In addition, there are various activities providing support to young social entrepreneurs that are external to the university, such as the School for Social Entrepreneurs which run programmes and workshops across the UK and has early-stage funding available via Lloyds Bank. Enactus, meanwhile, is a worldwide competition for students addressing social issues which also helps them gain skills featuring national events and an annual ‘World Cup’. Ashoka is a platform supporting social entrepreneurs with an extensive network and an accelerator programme for scaling ventures. The Skoll Foundation, founded in 1999 by Jeff Skoll (Stanford MBA and first president of eBay) also aims to fund novel social innovators. Many companies are also reaching out to help social entrepreneurs as part of their own CSR agenda. TUI’s Social Entrepreneurship in Tourism competition is one such example. Competitions have also sprung up to recognise success in social impact, such as the WISE100 to acknowledge successful women in social enterprise, created by Pioneers Post, and the PwC award for Impact in Social Enterprise in partnership with the School for Social Entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurship and employability Even if students do not ultimately set up a social enterprise, possessing skills and knowledge in this area can make them more employable as corporates looking to improve their own CSR want to hire socially responsible graduates. Many businesses are looking at that triple bottom line in order to attract more customers and highly qualified staff in a competitive environment. A recent survey of graduates by Prospects, for instance, suggested that more than 75 per cent of graduates would be more likely to apply to a company with strong positive environmental practices and 91 per cent of those surveyed said they wanted to work for a company that made a difference to people’s lives. For business school students aspiring to be lawyers, there are also opportunities to become ‘impact lawyers’, a rapidly growing field where the focus is on having a positive impact on social issues. Ironically, because of the world’s problems – climate change, war, and budget cuts for local and national governments, among many other things – there has never been a better time to be a social entrepreneur. There are so many opportunities that students can tackle and there are lots of ways in which a university or business school can give students a head start.
In terms of debt funding, there is Triodos Bank, founded in the Netherlands in 1980, and the Charity Bank and the Co-Operative bank in the UK, all of which aim to invest in more ethical and sustainable businesses, as well as other funders such as Big Society Capital. Increasingly, there are also equity investors looking at this triple bottom line. The Acumen Fund, established in 2001, seeks to invest in businesses addressing global poverty and Nesta has an investment arm which aims to offer funding of between £500k and £1 million for companies addressing societal challenges. Many funding opportunities are also listed on the Good Finance website. In addition, a large number of business plan competitions at university and business school now have a social enterprise element, such as the University of Manchester Venture Further competition which has a top prize of £15k. The competition has so far helped companies including Bounceback Education (which aims to use tutoring to help address inequalities in education) and Bundlee (enabling people to rent baby clothes to address the issue of clothing waste). Universities may also offer other seed funding awards such as Flying Starter at the University of Manchester which enabled one social enterprise, Tales to Inspire, to take forward their business of providing podcasts and workshops run by people with powerful real-life stories to schools and corporates. The Ingenuity Programme and Competition based at the University of Nottingham, meanwhile, offers support for early-stage businesses that target social issues. Some of the 2022 winners of this competition, which has £90k of funding, are working to address dementia, domestic abuse and the wellbeing of low-income people. Then, there is the London HealthTech Challenge, run by London Business School, which aims to fund businesses developing early-stage business on improving people’s lives, and offers in-kind support, such as mentoring, as well as a £10k first prize. There is also the opportunity for philanthropic funding, in view of the large number of individuals who want to contribute to social enterprises. In addition, funding can come from local or national governments if the social enterprise is able to secure a contract with them providing a service on their behalf that has been outsourced. Accelerator programmes can also offer support and sometimes funding to help drive a student’s social enterprise forward, such as the ARC accelerator, a
BIOGRAPHY Robert A Phillips is a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Having worked in both large corporates and start-ups, he has a strong interest in student entrepreneurship and teaches entrepreneurship modules across the university. Phillips holds a PhD in biochemistry
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