Meet the Blog’s Host
Rolfe Larson provides consulting and training in areas such as strategic planning, market research, feasibility analysis, business planning, marketing and implementation strategies.
[Read more ...]earned income
SE: Empowering Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs (Marc Lane)
Marc Lane, arguably the most prolific writer in the social enterprise sector, last year wrote another one of his useful books, entitled: Social Enterprise: Empowering Mission-Drive Entrepreneurs. It’s a good book to glance through, and even more important, to have nearby on your bookshelf for when you have a legal question about social enterprise. For [...]
Life Cycle Financing Options
When you’re looking for financing, it may seem that anything will do. However, depending on the life cycle stage of your venture, some forms of financing are better than others. You want the right kind of capital for the needs of your business at that point in time.
State of Social Enterprise: 2012
Following President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week, we thought this would be a good time to evaluate the state of the social enterprise sector. So here is the npEnterprise Forum’s official, revised* State of the SE Sector 2012 address. Emerging Private Sector SEs Private sector SEs are now gaining momentum and recognition. Truth [...]
What Is NOT a Social Enterprise
Steve Jobs once said: “I am as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” So also it should be for the social enterprise sector. There are plenty of great things that are not SEs. To gain credibility and traction in the marketplace, the SE field cannot be all things [...]
ShoreBank Demise Dissected: “Too Good To Fail”
In August 2010, ShoreBank, the nation’s first, largest, and leading community bank, was shut down by regulators. It was a major blow to the social enterprise sector. For almost forty years, ShoreBank made more than $4 billion in mission investments and financed more than 59,000 units of affordable housing. It spearheaded the national movement of [...]
Social Enterprise Summit, Chicago, 10/30-11/2
If you haven’t heard about it yet, check out the Social Enterprise Summit, put on by Social Enterprise Alliance. For those interested in social enterprise, there’s no better way to learn, network and get inspired by the incredible people who organize and put on these conferences. I’ve been to ten of them, and gained something [...]
New! Sales Strategy for Rhode Island Social Enterprises
For years, some of us have mused about some kind of national system to drive sales to social enterprises. The basic idea is that there are government agencies and socially-minded companies who might be willing to purchase large quantities of goods and services from social enterprises, provided someone would identify qualified suppliers and make it [...]
Finding Good Venture Ideas (Part 3)
This blog was written by guest writer Jan Cohen. Today we venture up the Risk Chart to explore New Markets for Existing Services or Products. The focus is on researching who else could use, and pay for, what you already provide.
Finding Good Venture Ideas (part 1)
This blog was written by guest writer Jan Cohen. When most nonprofit staff and Boards think about earned income, they typically think about doing “something new”. The Risk Chart helps organizations to clearly see how risk increases as they go from “things and people they know” to those they have no experience with.
Using social media to sell stuff (Part II)
Given the explosion of social media for networking, relationship-building, communication and awareness, I’ve been surprised at how few social enterprises seem to be using it specifically to attract and retain customers. The good news is that this is changing, and, well, the more I look the more ventures I come across taking advantage of these [...]
