Paul Light’s ongoing research into social entrepreneurs (or, the chapters appearing on the blog) provides much of interest for those in the sector. The latest post discusses the dual identity of social entrepreneurs, which a US paper divides into “entrepreneur” or “activist” (Simms/Robinson 2005)

Their theory is that, although these two identities (and possibly others) co-exist in social entrepreneurs, they must decide which of them comes first. The hypothesis is then that those who choose the “activist” to be primary will end up creating non-profit organisations, while those who choose the “entrepreneur” to be primary are more likely to create for-profit organisations. This seems a bit simplistic (is it really a simple choice between “profiting from a problem or contributing to a solution”?) and it might be argued that there is perhaps more of a continuum with activist at one end and entrepreneur at the other….(which would dovetail with our view of social entrepreneurs operating across various sectors).

What is curious to me is that the authors of the paper, and Light himself, separate out social impact and financial independence:

“The perceptions of benefits and risk [for social entrepreneurs] are driven by very different
goals—i.e., income and financial independence or social impact and
recognition.”

Well, yes and no (on a day to day/short term basis) but the amount of social impact to be had will be directly related to the sustainability/ongoing financing of the organisation. So financial independence is directly related to social impact (the goals are twinned), and to separate the two in this way seems slightly simplistic. Ultimately, what is being talked about is the old mission matrix which has CORE MISSION to FAR FROM MISSION along one axis, and £LOW to £HIGH on the other axis. You then plot different replica orologi activities/projects/opportunities against it, taking current situations into account.

The activist-entrepreneur continuum is an interesting way to think about that combination of social mission and financial independence, though…..