Entrepreneurship is the act of taking on risks to start a business to generate financial success, but what does Social Entrepreneurship mean? Social entrepreneurship is concerned with the enterprise for a social purpose and involves building organizations that have the capacity to be both commercially viable and socially constructive. Where traditional entrepreneurs identify markets as too risky and unknown, social entrepreneurs see those markets as the perfect areas to implement their ideas. The notion of social entrepreneurship was created through the increase in wealth disparity, global technological distribution, corporate social responsibility, and market/institutional failures. This led to a shift in non-profits to begin to look for ways to be financially sustainable and businesses to be more socially conscious.

Social entrepreneurship comes in many shapes and sizes. Large corporations, such as the Greeman Bank, deploy micro-loans to the most rural farmers of the world. On the other hand, there are small start-ups trying to solve how to decrease carbon emissions in households. While all social enterprises look different, they all follow the same vision to create a positive impact on the communities they interact with, from a social, environmental, and economic perspective. The entrepreneurs that run these enterprises are passionate about the causes that they are trying to solve, innovative in the ways they deploy new technologies, and adventurous in taking risks for their ventures. 

You do not need to start your own business in order to be a social entrepreneur; rather, it is a mindset that you can have in any job and profession that you pursue. The ability to see large problems and find new and innovative ways to blend current and new systems and technologies to solve large-scale problems. This can be applied to medicine, engineering, banking, and everything in between. In fact, we have students from all these different academic areas and more represented in the Social Entrepreneurship minor.

You may ask, how can I get involved at UVA? There are a few ways! The first is to join the Social Entrepreneurship Minor. We have a variety of classes from across the entire UVA course catalog that allow you to both learn the basics of entrepreneurship and what it means to be a social entrepreneur, but also the ability to dive deeper into issues that are important to you. Our faculty are incredibly experienced in a variety of fields and have had great success starting their own innovative ventures. Other ways to engage in social entrepreneurship are to travel and meet new people and grow your perspective. One of the key aspects for anyone interested in solving large problems is to immerse yourself in different areas and learn from the people. We offer an experiential J-term class each year called Impact Investing in Appalachia which allows us to see firsthand the challenges and opportunities of an area once dominated by the coal industry. Being able to understand new environments in a completely different way is vital to producing successful endeavors. Finally, practice makes perfect, so trying to start your own social enterprise is a great way to try to implement new ways of thinking, fail and learn, and meet the great people and resources that UVA provides for entrepreneurship. It is an incredible community to learn from!

If this is interesting to you, come meet with the Social Entrepreneurship Fellows! We have office hours on Mondays from 12:00-2:00 PM in Garrett L017 with Drew and Wednesdays from 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM in McIntire with Liza. Additionally, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter. Finally, all students who take ENTP 1010: Startups can join the Social Entrepreneurship Minor; be sure to take this class to join an amazing community of individuals excited to make social change! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact BattenAdmissions@virginia.edu! Applications for this program close on February 21 so do not delay in applying today!