Additional Resources on Social Entrepreneurship and Government
Louisiana Office of Social Entrepreneurship
The Office of SE will enable citizens and organizations to start and build entrepreneurial, innovative, results-oriented solutions to social problems facing the state of Louisiana. The Office accomplishes this by: encouraging social innovation; creating an enabling environment; scaling success; rewarding initiatives for their performance; and producing knowledge that enhances success. One day, the state of Louisiana will be a center for excellence in social innovation and social entrepreneurship where all citizens and organizations contribute to ensuring Louisiana is a great place to live, work and play.
The Aspen Institute's Nonprofit Sector Research Fund
The Nonprofit Sector Research Fund (NSRF) was established to increase understanding of the nonprofit sector and philanthropy. Its work is focused in three areas: 1) Nonprofits and Public Policy; 2) Social Enterprise; and 3) Foundation Policy and Practice. In each area, NSRF identifies priority research topics; supports research and dialogue on these topics; communicates research findings to appropriate audiences; and works with other organizations to facilitate the use of new knowledge to improve relevant practices and policies.
Investing in Social Entrepreneurship and Fostering Social Innovation by Michele Jolin, Center for American Progress
This paper identifies some of the key ways in which policymakers can support the growth and spread of innovative non-profit solutions, and offers some policy guidelines and a framework that the Center for American Progress intends to explore and expand during 2008. It argues that government can do more to expand the impact of the most successful social entrepreneurial models and to create a pipeline of future entrepreneurial efforts in the critical nonprofit sector.
The Phoenix Project: Accelerating Social Entrepreneurship in Virginia
The Phoenix Project is leading a social entrepreneurship movement in Virginia and believes that to ameliorate Virginia’s most pressing and long-term public challenges, especially poverty, we need a new type of leader and form of leadership: social entrepreneurs. The Project leads this movement by educating our next generation of social entrepreneurs through leadership programs and by convening statewide events at which leaders from the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors discuss strategies for accelerating social entrepreneurship in Virginia.
Community Wealth/The Democracy Collaborative
Across the United States, democratic, community wealth-building institutions have begun to multiply dramatically in number in recent years. Community-Wealth.org brings together, for the first time, information about the broad range of community wealth strategies, policies, models, and innovations. The site is built upon the proposition that above all, practitioners, policy makers, academics and the media need solid, cross-cutting information and tools that can help them to understand and support the expansion of these institutions.
America Forward
America Forward is a coalition of more than 60 social entrepreneurs and high-impact organizations that have developed innovative, results-driven solutions to some of America's toughest domestic problems. The coalition is working to connect these social entrepreneurs with the presidential campaigns and other policymakers to present new visions for the role of entrepreneurship in social problem solving and the role government can play as an investor in innovative solutions.