How do I learn more about Social Entrepreneurship and Financing?

Social Entrepreneurship is an incredibly multidisciplinary practice in that it is a term used to describe a profession that is boundless in terms of reach.  But if one is an aspiring social entrepreneur, where is a centralized database to get information relevant to social issues and fundraising mechanisms available? SocialEarth.org is a website dedicated to providing social entrepreneurs with the resources he or she needs in order to become a successful social entrepreneur. Started by my University of Minnesota colleague, SocialEarth has grown into a platform where contributors from all over the world discuss how business varies from one region to the next.

Being that this week's articles focus on capitalization and measuring impact.  After reviewing an article on SocialEarth regarding microfinance entitled  "7 thoughts in Thinking again about Microfinance," I realized just how much the microcredit and microfinance industries have changed over the last 15 years. Rather, microcredit has shifted into microfinance, where there are varying methods of financing the impoverished. David Roodman, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, is sited in this article saying “All financial services help meet this demand, however imperfectly: loans, savings accounts, insurance, money transfers. A mother can pay the doctor for treating her daughter by getting an emergency loan from a friend, depleting savings, persuading her brother in the city to send money, or even — if she is very lucky — using health insurance. That is why the microcredit movement became the microfinance movement and today supports other services along with loans.”

In Roodman's latest blog post, he critiques the Better Than Cash Alliance, an organization dedicated to increasing the use of mobile payments in developing markets.  Roodman brings up a good point in that mobile payments should not be viewed as a panacea to poverty.  Individuals need to have money in the first place in order to transfer it.  Development still needs to exist in order to raise the GDP of a country.  Facilitating the development of a nation through technology can help, but without an educated society, underdeveloped countries will continue to suffer.

Financing social ventures may not be as easy in that entrepreneurs want to create a return on investment while helping society. However by utilizing resources such as SocialEarth, and experts in microfinancing such as David Roodman, it is possible to attain the essential knowledge free of cost prior to starting a new social venture abroad.