Funding Innovation for Skoll Social Entrepreneurs
I was recently at the Skoll World Forum, probably the best conference in the world for meeting with top social entrepreneurs. As a longtime member of the Skoll community, I prize this week for the opportunity to talk frankly with peers about our biggest mutual challenges. Peer learning is the most valuable opportunity for a field that has no operator's manual -- like social entrepreneurship! The constant theme is raising money for our social enterprises. But not just any money -- we talk about the most difficult money to raise: the unrestricted funding that is the lifeblood for a social entrepreneur. This kind of funding is essential for innovation, for responding to time-critical opportunities, prototyping new ideas and getting them to the point where they are a saleable product to customers and/or issue-focused donors. But, unrestricted funding is far harder to raise, because the donor is investing in the leadership of the organization as opposed to a specific set of deliverab...