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Mission and Overview
Launched
in early 2002, RISE is a project at Columbia Business
School whose mission
is to study and disseminate knowledge about the markets, metrics and
management of for-profit and nonprofit social enterprise and social
venturing.
RISE is sponsored within Columbia Business
School by the Social
Enterprise Program and the Eugene M. Lang Center
for Entrepreneurship.
RISE deepens learning opportunities for students and
practitioners by focusing on key issues in current practice of social
enterprise, social investing and social venturing. RISE concentrates on
people working where the lines of previously distinct nonprofit and
for-profit sectors start to blur, in what Jed Emerson of the Hewlett
Foundation and J. Greg Dees of Duke University
have both called a new "hybrid" space for social
entrepreneurship.
RISE studies the growing practice of building profit
and nonprofit ventures that aim to achieve social and financial impact
through their products, services and other business practices, and the
entities that fund them. RISE explores issues of nonprofit
organizations building capacity and using business practices to sustain
their growth, as well as issues for for-profit companies trying to
achieve social impacts as well as financial returns. RISE works
collaboratively with investment funds around the country as well as
foundations, other universities and intermediary groups to define,
explore and report on key issues of interest to this developing field.
RISE concentrates on three strategic areas:
1) Markets:
Understanding the Capital Markets for Social Entrepreneurs
The RISE 2003 Social Investor Survey, made possible by Columbia Business School,
is supported by two private foundations, the Rockefeller Foundation and
the Surdna Foundation, and
five leading double bottom line venture funds: Calvert Social Funds, Commons Capital, LP,
Expansion Capital Partners, LLC, Sustainable
Jobs Fund, LLC, and Underdog
Ventures.
The RISE 2003 Social Investor Survey was the first
national survey of investment vehicles that make early-stage equity
investments in scalable for-profit ventures whose products, services or
business structures can be considered to have positive social or
environmental impacts. Survey
results are available for free in two forms. The RISE
Double Bottom Line Investor Directory, a searchable public
database of these funds, is accessible on the RISE website. In
addition, reports and articles with fuller information on double bottom
line capital market taken from the survey are available on our Reports page.
2) Metrics: Improving
Tools for Social Impact Assessment
RISE staff are working in collaboration with several social investment
funds and foundations to review, analyze and apply various methods that
can be used by early-stage social enterprises to help assess social
impact and measure social return on investment (SROI). Reports are
available on the Reports page.
3) Management:
Understanding Strategic Choices and Dilemmas
The RISE / IC / SVN 2004 Social Venture Survey
Project is a collaboration among RISE, Investors’
Circle and the Social Venture
Network to conduct a new survey of for profit social ventures,
with funding from the Marion Institute, the Omidyar Network and the
Rockefeller Foundation. This
exploratory study took the first snapshot of the landscape of for
profit social venture CEOs and entrepreneurs in the United States,
focusing on emerging companies that started within the past thirty
years. It has concentrated on
defining size, scale and scope of social ventures, how entrepreneurs
work to create and evaluate social and environmental value, what their
financial success and needs are, and what lessons they have for new
social entrepreneurs.
More information available here.
RISE has also underwritten the development of several case studies,
which have been used in Columbia
Business School's elective course on
Social Entrepreneurship, and can be made available for use by other
social entrepreneurship faculty on
request. Case targets include nonprofit and for-profit social
ventures and social investment funds. Case writers work directly with
key staff of the ventures and funds to frame key strategic issues from
managers' perspectives. Cases
available include Aspire
Public Schools
and The Doe Fund.
For
more information, please contact:
Catherine Clark,
RISE Director, cathy@cathyhc.com.
Reports, cases, presentations and articles will
be posted as they become available on our RISE
Reports page.
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