Developed by Social Actions (full disclosure: led by one of my favorite colleagues, Peter Deitz), the Social Entrepreneur API is "the first open database of information about social entrepreneurs who have won fellowships and awards from social enterprise funders. The tool allows philanthropists, investors, press, and fellow entrepreneurs to find social entrepreneurs based on keyword, location, cause area, population served, and a variety of other factors." "Civic Ventures (sponsor of The Purpose Prize), The Draper Richards Foundation, ideablob, PopTech, The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and The Skoll Foundation have pooled their data to create an open database of information about vetted social entrepreneurs. "
Sounds good in theory; how does it hold up in practice? To answer that question, let me call on next gen social investors to play around w/Social Entrepreneur API ! From your perspective, how is it helpful? how could it be more helpful? how could it inform and advance the efforts of social investors? Tell us how to shape this pipeline!
I really liked using the API! It led me to stumble upon all sorts of ventures I would never have specifically sought out, but I found myself reading about them and then putting in a wide variety of search terms just to see what would come up. The search function is still very simple (if you misspell something you don't get any results or suggestions), but in my opinion its on its way to being an awesome tool.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good move, a hub for positive entities in our political economy. I think this bank of social entrepreneurs should incorporate a broader method of recruiting participants (to extend beyond the reach of foundations and digital realms into real life... --> addresses of businesses, cities and locations to meet people face to face and support these businesses and organizations).
ReplyDeleteBuilding off what one social entrepreneur on the API noted:
to see that much of the world's problems are due to human artifice that has created economic paradigms favoring the concentration of wealth into the hands of the few.
I am interested in expanding support and awareness of cooperative business models. Within our current political economic system, as rich people (of the global north), the best thing we could do is shift resources into businesses that promote equitable payment structures for their employees.
As a digital mechanism, this information hub is going to attract richer rather than poorer people. Accordingly, I think that it should serve to provide avenues for its viewers to support socialist business models as consumers and investors.
This sounds like a great tool -- I wonder why it wasn't created earlier. I'll certainly take advantage of API as I seek to shape my own social entrepreneurship venture. However, there is something I find concerning and would like clarified. Are only social entrepreneurs who have won fellowships and awards eligible to be showcased in the database? I ask because many NGOs/social entrepreneurs most in need of support and collaboration are those which haven't earned any awards or fellowships yet. For example, many of the NGOs in Niger rely heavily on personal donations since there aren't many foundation or government grants available. Needless to say, their services are usually very limited. Moreover, some causes, for example those relating to women's rights, receive less support domestically than internationally. These NGOs badly need more attention their way and API might be a great way to attract it. API's wonderful idea of putting all these social entrepreneur projects in one database will broaden people's awareness of international problems (and solutions!). Most people don't know Niger exists, but if someone were visiting API for some other reason, they'd stand a chance of coming across it by accident. I hope API will leave itself open to those social ventures still struggling to earn an award or fellowship.
ReplyDeleteDiana, thanks so much for drawing attention to the Social Entrepreneur API and -- most importantly -- for encouraging readers to provide the kind of feedback that will guide its development.
ReplyDeleteAs one of the Social Actions team members working on this project, I'm thrilled to see such thoughtful comments. Nomi, you're right that there's much more functionality and ease to be built into the search interface, but it's great to see that even in this early stage its encouraging the kind of find-its-own-path exploration that's introducing you to entrepreneurs you otherwise wouldn't be learning about. Of course, as an open dataset the API is available for anyone to build a robust search engine or other kind of application for it. We're looking forward to search.socialentrepreneurapi.org being just one of many places you can access the dataset and find what's relevant to you.
Sebastian, I'm grateful you're drawing attention to what ISN'T in the Social Entrepreneur API -- of the entire spectrum of entrepreneurs working on behalf of social causes, this is a very small sub-section. Over time, the profiles included in this API will expand -- and the organizations involved are listening carefully to what people like you are asking for as that expansion gets underway. In the meantime, the number of APIs profiling all kinds of social entrepreneurs will increase, so there will be more opportunity for complementary resources to link up and be displayed together in search engines like this one as well as other applications. And you're right, this project assumes access to information technologies which precludes a large percentage of people who would benefit from it. I'm looking forward to finding (and building) bridges between those communities, too.
Rachel, this Social Entrepreneur API includes only profiles of entrepreneurs who have won fellowships and awards from the programs that are participating. The number of programs will expand, but the criteria is expected to remain (though perhaps expand to include entrepreneurs who have been vetted by these programs but for one reason or another didn't receive the fellowship or award). The great thing about APIs (open datasets) is that anyone can create one. Your comment is part of a larger growing demand for all kinds of open datasets all kinds of social entrepreneurs -- something I'm looking forward to seeing, too.
Christine
Christine Egger
Social Actions for
http://www.socialentrepreneurapi.org
This is an interesting project for more than just investors. It could also be a great resource for entrepreneurs involved in similar projects to find one another and share ideas and for rising entrepreneurs to get ideas and see what's been tried before. There's a tendency to see social entrepreneurship "inventions" in the same way as general "inventions" in a (monetary) profit driven market (ie. that they are the property of the innovator and copying/cooperating is painful to profits), but when we're talking about social profits this turns around: the more people know about and/or work together on a particular innovation the greater the potential profit. It might be interesting to see how a resource like the API and the increasing ease of communication and coordination over the internet as it becomes more user friendly and more and more social entrepreneurs are online facilitate this sort of coordination and dispersal of ideas.
ReplyDeleteAPI is a very useful tool in that it encourages hesitant and/or potential investors to invest in social ventures. Non-profit organizations and subsequently most social ventures are known to be disorganized and "unreasonable" in their broad aspirations and small endowments (at least to the realist) There are thousands of nonprofits and social projects and choosing amongst them can be tedious and discouraging. How do you choose among a variety of good intentions? API is valuable in that it presents prospective investors with vetted social projects that guarantee a high social impact or return. API legitimizes the arena of social entrepenurship. It offers efficiency, specificity and a form of security other search engines fail to provide. The security of listing projects already recognized to have worked. I also think the projects on API create a guideline or framework for other social ventures to look up to. Indirectly, API is creating diverse models for success that other projects can apply and use for their own social ventures. I am curious of how the vetting criteria or process works and what benchmarks API uses to select the social projects posted on their search engine.
ReplyDeleteA good idea for identifying potential social impact, but not so good from our perspective of a social enterprise generating own funding and getting on with it.
ReplyDeleteIt creates the impression that a business school elite by ovesight or design, will close ranks to exclude those from outside who do what they do in spite of not being awared grants.