‘Social Entrepreneurship’ is becoming commonplace in MBA programs across the country. Schools are recognizing students’ interest in social-sector management topics and the growing trend of MBA graduates seeking to use their educations to “make a difference.” The Foster School of Business at the University of Washington has gone one step further: it holds a “Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition” (GSEC) in which “students from around the world find creative, commercially sustainable ways to address problems of poverty in the developing world.”

We see social entrepreneurship business plan competitions such as GSEC as ideal opportunities for introducing business students to the benefits of social enterprise, and to providing these individuals with real-world opportunities to investigate pressing social problems and to present practical, sustainable solutions.

GSEC’s guidelines’ are similar to those used by the Great Bay Foundation when evaluating grant requests. Great Bay needs to be sure that proposed projects can make a positive impact on the lives’ of disadvantaged individuals, that their models are capable of being implemented, and that their enterprises can be sustained through earned-income.