Social enterprises are businesses that seek to achieve financial sustainability while addressing pressing societal challenges. They are found in every industry and often blend funding sources, including traditional venture capital, impact investors, and occasionally charitable foundations.
At Venture Lab, we focus on supporting these entrepreneurial ventures that bridge the gap between business innovation and societal impact.
At Venture Lab, we focus on supporting these entrepreneurial ventures that bridge the gap between business innovation and societal impact.
The Social Entrepreneurship Initiative aims to support different models of social enterprises.
For Profit Social Enterprises:
center their business model around a social or environmental mission while pursuing financial sustainability and profit, which can be reinvested into growth or shared with stakeholders.
Non-Profit Social Enterprises:
though mission-driven first, often integrate revenue-generating activities (e.g., selling goods/services, grants, donations) to fund operations, but surpluses are wholly reinvested into their cause, not distributed as profit.
Suggested Courses
MGMT 2120 | Social Entrepreneurship
This is a course on creating a business to attack a social problem and thereby accomplish both social impact and financial sustainability. For this course, social entrepreneurship is defined as entrepreneurship used to profitably confront social problems. This definition therefore views social entrepreneurship as a distinct alternative to public sector initiatives.
MKTG 2660 | Marketing for Social Impact
This course focuses on the strategies for changing the behavior of a target segment of consumers on key issues in the public interest (e.g., health behaviors, energy efficiency, poverty reduction, fundraising for social causes). How managers partner with organizations (e.g., non-profits, government) to achieve social impact will also be explored.
MGMT 8120 | Social Entrepreneurship
Featured Student Organizations
The Wharton Sustainable Business Club (SBC) engages Wharton MBA students passionate about the intersection of business and sustainability. SBC was founded to connect Wharton MBAs to the ideas, technologies, and career networks that will build a greener global economy. The club’s mission is to build a community interested in addressing global environmental issues through business solutions, while increasing sustainability-related academic and career opportunities at Wharton.
Established in 2007, the Penn Social Entrepreneurship Movement (PennSEM) is a community of innovators, consultants, and entrepreneurs based out of the University of Pennsylvania and dedicated to social impact. Our passion for sustainable change drives us to build new social enterprises, support existing ones through pro-bono consulting services, and grow the movement across campus and beyond.
The Wharton Undergraduate Founders and Funders Association seeks to create an inclusive Penn Wharton network that will combine mentorship, educational workshops, speaker events and real world experience to support under-represented founders, investors, and technology operators.
The Ascendance Social Enterprise Club at the University of Pennsylvania (ASELxPenn) is a student organization that is focused on developing self-sustaining social enterprises. We help Penn students by empowering them to start and run social enterprises in the fields that they are passionate about through tested growth strategies and connecting them to global resources to learn and develop their ideas.
Alumni Companies
Quote Module
The fundamental purpose of the social enterprise is to address a social problem and generate revenue in doing so.
The Social Entrepreneur’s Playbook; Ian C. MacMillan & James D. Thompson