Bill Drayton

CEO, Ashoka: Everyone a Changemaker

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Book Recommendations:

Recommended by Bill Drayton

Social Startup Success is a marvelous compilation of stories of some of the most inspiring leaders of our time. (from Amazon)

With business advice from an expert entrepreneur, learn how to identify and leverage the key factors that will bring sustainability and success to your startup. Kathleen Kelly Janus, a lecturer at the Stanford University Program on Social Entrepreneurship and the founder of the successful social enterprise Spark, set out to investigate what makes a startup succeed or fail. She surveyed more than 200 high-performing social entrepreneurs and interviewed dozens of founders. Social Startup Success shares her findings for the legions of entrepreneurs working for social good, revealing how the best organizations get over the revenue hump. How do social ventures scale to over $2 million, Janus's clear benchmark for a social enterprise's sustainability? Janus, tapping into strong connections to the Silicon Valley world where many of these ventures are started or and/or funded, reveals insights from key figures such as DonorsChoose founder Charles Best, charity:water's Scott Harrison, Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code and many others. Social Startup Success will be social entrepreneurship's essential playbook; the first definitive guide to solving the problem of scale.

Recommended by Bill Drayton

This remarkable book brings you the power of three great entrepreneurial traditions: the 500 years of extraordinary Jesuit changemakers for the good, the business spirits and tools of Silicon Valley, and the wave of social changemakers and entrepreneurs who are changing the world more deeply every year. (from Amazon)

This is the first book on creating and running a social enterprise to combine theoretical discussions with current cases from around the world, filling a huge gap in the literature. It serves as an eminently practical blueprint for those who wish to build, sustain, and grow social ventures. Building a Successful Social Venture draws on Eric Carlson's and James Koch's pioneering work with the Global Social Benefit Institute, cofounded by Koch at Santa Clara University's Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Since 2003, over 200 Silicon Valley executives have mentored more than 800 aspiring social entrepreneurs at the GSBI. It is this unparalleled real-world foundation that truly sets the book apart. Early versions of the book were used in both undergraduate and MBA classes. Part 1 of the book describes the assumptions that the GSBI model is based on: a bottom-up approach to social change, a focus on base-of-the-pyramid markets, and a specific approach to business planning developed by the GSBI. Part 2 presents the seven elements of the GSBI business planning process, and Part 3 lays out the keys to executing it. The book includes "Social Venture Snapshots" illustrating how different organizations have realized elements of the plan, as well as a wealth of checklists and exercises. Social ventures hold enormous promise to solve some of the world's most intractable problems. This book offers a tested framework for students, social entrepreneurs, and field researchers who wish to learn more about the application of business principles and theories of change for advancing social progress and creating a more just world.

Recommended by Bill Drayton

Everybody is a changemaker! We can teach and learn skills that help us make more effective and lasting changes. This textbook is a valuable guide to get that journey started. What are you waiting for? (from Amazon)

Social entrepreneurship is a revolution occurring around the world today. People from all walks of life are developing and implementing innovative, effective, and sustainable solutions in response to social and environmental challenges. These solutions include products, services, and interventions brought to market by new startups and existing organizations, both for-profit and non-profit. Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship summarizes the basic steps and tools needed to understand the challenge you are tackling, develop potential solutions, build a business model, measure, and grow your impact. Featuring case studies and interviews with leaders in the field, this comprehensive guide spans multiple sectors, including health, the environment, education, agriculture, commerce, finance, and retail. Designed for readers of all backgrounds, this book will change the way you look at today’s world and what you do about it. Further resources and information can be found at http://teresachahine.com/

Recommended by Bill Drayton

Everybody is a changemaker! We can teach and learn skills that help us make more effective and lasting changes. This textbook is a valuable guide to get that journey started. What are you waiting for? (from Amazon)

Social Entrepreneurship provides a 10-stage framework for building impactful ventures within and across new and existing organizations. The book summarizes the basic steps and tools needed to understand a social or environmental challenge of your choice, develop potential solutions, build a business model, measure outcomes, and grow your impact. This fully updated second edition builds on the concepts and tools introduced previously, broadening the scope to those working or preparing to work in organizations globally. Concepts addressed include intrapreneurship and, for the first time, extrapreneurship, which considers innovating across organizations to achieve collective impact. Featuring international case studies and interviews with leaders in the field, this comprehensive guide spans multiple sectors, including health, the environment, education, agriculture, commerce, finance, and retail. Summaries, exercises, and key learning points help to aid and cement learning. A widely regarded and valuable text, Social Entrepreneurship should be core reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. The book’s applied 10-stage approach will also be valuable for those in executive education as well as professionals and entrepreneurs looking to equip themselves with the tools needed to succeed in social change.

Recommended by Bill Drayton

This book will change most readers. Its style is very direct. It sees the future. It draws on both the classics and the authors' deep knowledge of our field. It is practical, and it cares. (from Amazon)

We are entering a new era—an era of impact. The largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history will soon be under way, bringing with it the potential for huge increases in philanthropic funding. Engine of Impact shows how nonprofits can apply the principles of strategic leadership to attract greater financial support and leverage that funding to maximum effect. As Good to Great author Jim Collins writes in his foreword, this book offers "a detailed roadmap of disciplined thought and action for turning a good nonprofit into one that can achieve great impact at scale." William F. Meehan III and Kim Starkey Jonker identify seven essential components of strategic leadership that set high-achieving organizations apart from the rest of the nonprofit sector. Together, these components form an "engine of impact"—a system that organizations must build, tune, and fuel if they hope to make a real difference in the world. Drawing on decades of teaching, advising, grantmaking, and research, Meehan and Jonker provide an actionable guide that executives, staff, board members, and donors can use to jumpstart their own performance and to achieve extraordinary results for their organization. Along with setting forth best practices using real-world examples, the authors outline common management challenges faced by nonprofits, showing how these challenges differ from those faced by for-profit businesses in important and often-overlooked ways. By offering crucial insights on the fundamentals of nonprofit management, this book will help leaders equip their organizations to fire on all cylinders and unleash the full potential of the nonprofit sector. Visit www.engineofimpact.org for additional information.

Recommended by Bill Drayton

Jonathan Lewis has risked trying and learning changemaking, and shares that journey in a light-footed style that treats the reader like a family member. (from Amazon)

The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur is about powering up your social justice career. The world feels so screwed up, so unfair, so unnecessarily mean, so Trumpian. More than ever, the world needs you. This book is a book of conviction about the unfinished work of social justice. According to Lewis: "The crusty work of social entrepreneurship is as much fun as I’m permitted to have in public. It’s joyous, fulfilling and happy-making. Tackling big challenges is heady stuff. Fighting the good fight is utterly gratifying." The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur is a compendium of 21 original essays and insights - part memoir, part handbook - about the challenges and questions every social entrepreneur thinks about. For the novice changemaker, each chapter bristles with provocative tips and tools to transform your social justice career. Because social entrepreneurship is not called solo entrepreneurship, the book also contains 19 additional commentaries by other change-makers. Social entrepreneurs are a club of conscience. Sign up. Show up. Stand up. All book profits donated to social justice causes.