What is Social Enterprise?
Social enterprise, the development of commercial endeavors that provide revenues and jobs for socially beneficial causes, is a growing force nationwide, increasing in popularity as social needs grow and the pool of charitable dollars decreases. More generally, social enterprise is a socioeconomic development strategy that is increasingly being adopted by innovative organizations spanning all sectors and industries (public health, education, social services, democracy building, and arts and culture, to name a few). Colleges and universities are training top students to define and scale socially minded businesses, as key social issues such as food security, environment sustainability, access to quality education and disabled rights advance to the forefront. Here in Rhode Island, social enterprises already train homeless people, employ developmentally disabled adults and improve health and wellness.

Why Social Enterprise?
Social Enterprise provides both economic and social returns. Nonprofit social enterprises create jobs and/or generate revenues that make organizations more sustainable and allow them to serve more and serve better. For profit social enterprises respond to a social need while creating jobs and generating wealth. Some concrete benefits include:
- a stronger, more sustainable non-profit community
- workforce development
- innovative businesses that respond to social needs
- opportunities for “double bottom line” investments for socially minded investors
- less risk and greater returns for charitable/philanthropic investment
- opportunities for corporations to improve brand and employee morale, through investment and professional skill transfer

Resources
We provide a number of resources for those interested in learning more about the emerging field of social enterprise. We also provide tools for organizations interested in launching, developing or scaling a social enterprise.

SERI (Social Enterprise Rhode Island): Here you can access information about the greater social enterprise community in Rhode Island.

Recommended Reading List: coming soon
Feasibility Tools: coming soon
Business Planning for Social Enterprise: coming soon
Recommended Social Enterprise Resource Organizations: coming soon