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CASE Announces New "Social Impact Exchange" and Business Plan Competition
October 21, 2009
Despite all the important work accomplished by social purpose initiatives over the last several decades, significant growth or scale has remained an elusive goal for most of them. The inability to achieve scale--that is, to make a meaningful and sustainable impact by serving large numbers of those in need of assistance--has limited the potential of these organizations and the people they serve.
Further, among the few that have succeeded in bringing their innovations to scale, there is a lack of organized, readily accessible knowledge on best practices and on strategies and methods for financing growth. At the same time, there is no focal point or central place through which interested parties can collaborate, share knowledge and work jointly to drive increased scale activity, financial investment and field building.
To address this situation, a newly designed initiative, the Social Impact Exchange (the "Exchange"), will bring together a network of organizations and funders to help top-performing social innovations scale more effectively.
The Exchange is led by the Growth Philanthropy Network in collaboration with the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society at the Sanford School of Public Policy. The Exchange has three primary goals:
- Developing and sharing knowledge on practices for expanding programs that work
- Providing venues to collaboratively fund expansion of successful initiatives
- Helping build a field infrastructure for more efficient scaling
"Given the magnitude and urgency of the social problems we face both globally and in the U.S., nothing is more important than helping those with innovative solutions scale their impact," said professor J. Gregory Dees, founding faculty director at CASE and a widely recognized pioneer in researching and teaching social entrepreneurship. "This new initiative holds great promise for doing just that."
Social Impact Exchange activities will include academic research and real-time case studies, an annual conference, an annual investment fair and a Social Impact Business Plan competition. This business plan competition serves as a platform for identifying social sector initiatives with the greatest demonstrated impact and readiness to grow--and for supporting the most promising ones with financial and consulting awards. We hope to engage Fuqua alumni in this competition as early-round judges, vetting applicants through an online clearinghouse.
Expectations of Judges:
- Sign up to become a judge (by 11/16/09 at http://tinyurl.com/SocialImpactExchange)
- Review and score either five (5) strategy papers (max 8 pages each) or three (3) draft business plans (max 30 pages each). These documents will also be reviewed by at least three additional judges, including other Duke alumni, competition sponsors, and other experts in the field.
- Complete a scoring questionnaire for each paper/plan reviewed. We will provide instructions on scoring and an online tool to enter your results. Entrants will not know the names of those who evaluated their materials, and your scores will remain anonymous to them.
Judging Timeline:
To learn more about CASE research on this topic, please browse www.ScalingSocialImpact.org or contact CASE Managing Director Matt Nash at mnash@duke.edu.
About the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship
Based at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) is a research and education center that promotes the entrepreneurial pursuit of social impact through the thoughtful adaptation of business expertise.
A major focus of the research activity at CASE has been on the topic of scaling social impact. CASE faculty have published books and articles that provide frameworks and theories that can be useful to practitioners in strategizing how they might be able to take a small, modestly-effective social entrepreneurial initiative and turn it into a venture that does more widespread and/or more successful work at resolving a social problem. The center has developed case studies that document successful scaling efforts, and additional empirical research is being conducted to try to isolate those factors that are the key drives of effectiveness at scaling. Finally, CASE has hosted several conferences focused on scaling, including a recent global research colloquium on social entrepreneurship held at Duke; the research reported at these events has been shared on websites and in a forthcoming published volume, the first in a new series of books to be published by CASE.