The Fuqua School of Business announced Tuesday the creation of the Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, taking its first step in a 10-year initiative to promote entrepreneurial leadership in the social sector.
Over the next five years, The Atlantic Philanthropies, an international foundation which supports social and non-profit programs, will finance CASE with a $2.5 million grant. Fuqua will match the grant over 10 years.
The center is part of the school's commitment to educating leaders worldwide and provides students with the opportunity to work among several of the graduate and professional schools.
The center will complement an existing competition called the Start-Up Challenge, which identifies the best organizational concepts created by teams with at least one Duke student. The program then provides seed money, resources and contacts to turn them into productive businesses.
"Start-Up's social enterprise track is focused not on the business aspect, but on what is the social benefit of the business," said Bradley Zimmer, a second-year law student and Duke Start-Up Challenge co-chair. "CASE provides the program with funding and helps create the interdepartmental platform that allows [the chosen businesses] to succeed."
Adjunct Professor Gregory Dees, CASE's new director, has tapped into students' hidden interest in non-profit work, said Fuqua Dean Douglas Breeden in a statement.
Beth Anderson, managing director of CASE who worked at Stanford University with Dees, said that although CASE will begin at Fuqua, she hopes it will ultimately become a University-wide initiative, engaging Fuqua MBA students, other Duke students and faculty.
"The core of activities... [will] stimulate interdisciplinary research among Fuqua faculty and may, down the road, have funding available for broader Duke faculty," Anderson said.
The center's first planned activity, "Scaling for Social Impact," will not be until next fall. It will incorporate action learning programs, executive education and consulting for businesses in the social and non-profit sectors over periods of six to nine months.
"We will be bringing together organizations that have had successful programs in one or two areas and are looking to expand," Anderson said. "We help them develop effective strategy for expanding through management and measuring performance, cross-sector partnership and developing viable financial strategies for lasting impact."
In the meantime, CASE will begin working with several existing Duke ventures, such as the Class of 2001 Loan Forgiveness Fund and the Social Enterprise Program of the Start-Up Challenge.
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