Building a Successful Social Venture

This is the first book on creating and running a social enterprise to combine theoretical discussions with current cases from around the world, filling a huge gap in the literature. It serves as an eminently practical blueprint for those who wish to build, sustain, and grow social ventures.


Social Ventures seek to bring the discipline and energy of private enterprise to the task of solving problems like poverty, lack of clean water, and poor environmental quality. Although several textbooks exist to introduce the concept to students--business schools and universities have scrambled to create social enterprise programs and classes to respond to student interest--most books are cursory and do not dig deeply into every step and process needed. Using famed case studies and examples from their own program at Santa Clara University, this book provides a path for any social entrepreneur to build an idea, get funding, and get going.