This Insights article was contributed by Katrina M. Harrell, President of KM Harrell Group.
There is no denying that entrepreneurs are change agents in the world.
We are able to identify opportunities amid challenges and are nearly always willing to take the risk of embarking on a journey often unpaved.
Regardless of whether you are interested in solving community, social-level problems or addressing a gap in the marketplace with a product or service, nonprofit leaders and entrepreneurs share the aforementioned traits, though they have a different methods and end goals.
This similarity, however, also brings up an increasingly significant challenge: nonprofits are tasked with finding innovative ways to sustain their organizations while managing board and community expectations, all in an increasingly competitive funding space.
That said, a social enterprise can be either nonprofit or for-profit, as both are simply tax and legal structures. A social enterprise simply denotes that your business - whether it retains a profit or not - offers a solution to a social issue through its products or services.
So, social entrepreneurship is rising as a solution to the challenges nonprofit organizations (NPOs) face, while also inspiring traditional for-profit entrepreneurs to utilize their products and services as a means to both impact community social issues and satisfy profit goals without needing to become a nonprofit organization.
But, how does an entrepreneur decide if their idea should be structured as a nonprofit or as a for-profit with a social enterprise focus?
Here are three important initial questions to ask yourself.
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The 2022 WilmingtonBiz: Book on Business is an annual publication showcasing the Wilmington region as a center of business.