At DRK, our work is guided by a singular belief: that finding, funding and supporting exceptional social entrepreneurs and the organizations they start is the foundation for creating profound and lasting impact for those most vulnerable in our world and its most vulnerable populations. Since 2002, we have invested in more than 130 organizations, many of them legendaryincluding Kiva.org, Room to Read, One Acre Fund, Living Goods, Last Mile Health, Crisis Text Line, and EducationSuperHighway; and newly named 2018 Skoll Award winners, myAgro and Global Health Corps, to name just a few. [...]

In February, the New Venture Competition’s Social Enterprise Track received a record 69 entries. Sixteen semifinalists presented at the end of March to expert judges from the field, who selected our four finalists. Learn more about each finalist team… [...]

I spent most of my career harnessing the power of business to effect positive social change. Before and after attending HBS, I helped grow Working Assets (now Credo, founded by Laura Scher, MBA 1985) into a successful social enterprise that has generated more than $80 million for nonprofits. Whereas Working Assets is a for-profit enterprise whose business model includes 1% of revenue being donated to nonprofits, Accion Chicago is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to build communities through entrepreneurship. [...]

Over the course of its inception two years ago, the Social Enterprise Initiative’s Alumni for Impact program has focused on connecting alumni within geographies and within subsectors of the social sector (the impact investing alumni group is an example) as well as developing platforms that enable knowledge sharing from faculty to alumni and from alumni to alumni (in the form of our quarterly newsletter, this blog, alumni webinars, and HBX). [...]

Mentoring is one of oldest ways that people have found to connect with each other and be changed in the process. Here are two strangers – not bound by family and in fact often intentionally matched due to their differences in history and circumstance – who nevertheless connect and, more than that, are transformed by the experience. Especially in a world that seems so divided by difference, it feels remarkable that such connections can occur at all. But they do – over and over again. [...]