This SVPRI led initiative, SERI (Social Entrepreneurs, Events, Resources, Innovations), aims to capitalize on the significant amount of emerging social enterprise activity in Rhode Island to increase awareness and share best practices to enhance the economic viability of our social services sector. SERI seeks to create an engaged social innovation community, become a hub for capturing statewide social innovation activity, and to make social enterprise development a key piece of the state’s economic development strategy. Further, we hope that Rhode Island will build a reputation as the example for social enterprise nationwide. The SERI initiative includes the following components:
Social Enterprise Community: This an inclusive effort to bring together stakeholders from the private, nonprofit (including university faculty and students), and government sectors to develop mutually beneficial collaborations, share models, lessons learned and best practice; and to promote positive social and economic change in the state. SERI will drive the facilitation of opportunities and support the resulting collaborations.
Events: SVP partner driven facilitations among the stakeholder groups will drive the opportunities for innovation. They cumulate in the annual SERI Summit, the first to be held November 12, 2009. We organize several regional, sector and industry targeted pre- and post-summit-events, and maintain a statewide social innovation calendar.
Resources: The SERI initiative powers social change by providing a platform to facilitate human, financial and intellectual capital to social enterprise. Partners provide pro bono consulting and reach into their network for resources and opportunities. SVPRI staff develops an online database of Rhode Island social enterprises; a social enterprise resource library featuring case studies, articles, and recommended readings; a social enterprise blog and a Rhode Island social entrepreneur video library.
Innovations: The SERI community collaborates to develop a set of innovations or programs which foster social enterprise development.