This course will provide students with an environment to learn and practice the skills of social entrepreneurship. Complex and often intractable social issues can benefit from new and innovative solutions. We will explore how social entrepreneurs evaluate social issues, develop a theory of change, launch solutions, fund raise, develop teams, and grow impact at scale. The approach of this course will be agnostic to sector and structure. Effective social solutions are emerging as for profit ventures in addition to nonprofit with new sources of capital available to fund growth. At the end of the course, students should have mastered a set of practical tools that will allow them to be effective problem solvers in diverse settings throughout their careers. While students will work throughout the semester to develop an effective social impact plan, the concepts and techniques developed in this course will be widely applicable in any workplace in either the public, enterprise, or social sectors.
Course Objectives
The course has four main objectives:
1) To introduce students to the concepts and practices of social entrepreneurship;
2) To equip students with a lens to evaluate social issue areas and develop a theory of change;
3) To explore the various structures and funding mechanisms in effective social solutions;
4) To empower them to develop their own innovative solutions to difficult social problems around the world.