The organization that until last year was known to Columbia Business School students as the National Social Venture Competition has now become global. The renamed Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC), a partnership between the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, Columbia Business School and The Goldman Sachs Foundation, now includes the London Business School. Five Berkeley MBA students founded the event with support from the Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation in 1998/99. Since then, the competition has drawn hundreds of participants from leading business schools, primarily in the U.S., and has sparked the curiosity of hundreds more who seek to apply their business acumen to solve societal and environmental issues. Each year, the competition awards $100,000 in prizes and it grants participating teams access to venture capitalists and angel investors, who serve as judges for the competition. Every year, as a run up to the main event, the competition hosts a symposium that addresses issues in social venturing through discussions featuring prominent entrepreneurs and business people in the area of social venture. This year’s symposium is titled “Challenges and Opportunities for Social Ventures” and will be held at Columbia Business School’s Uris Hall (Room 140) on October 10, 2003 between 8:45 AM and 5 PM. All students are invited to attend.   One faculty member who is deeply connected with the Global Social Venture Competition is Professor Catherine Clark. In addition to teaching a course on Social Entrepreneurship, Professor Clark acts as a faculty advisor for the GSVC. Prof. Clark is also the Director of Columbia’s Research Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship and will present findings at this year’s symposium from the first national study of early-stage social investors: “The RISE Capital Market Report: Double Bottom Line Private Equity Capital in 2002-2003.” As the organization prepares for the event, Gautam Nivarthy, a member of the GSVC Executive Committee, spoke to Prof. Clark for The Bottom Line.   GN: What is Social Venturing? Why should Business students be concerned about it?   CC: Social ventures are businesses and organizations that work to achieve social returns as well as financial returns. They aim not only to reap financial rewards, but also to have positive impact on deep social and environmental problems, by directly influencing customers, employees, communities, and even the global ecosystem.   Social ventures are not new: they have existed for years and have been recognized as tools to blend business and social objectives by some of America’s greatest business leaders. Andrew Carnegie, for example, started a financial social venture to provide retirement benefits for teachers using an annuity structure; it’s become TIAA-CREF, one of the nation’s largest pension funds.   Both nonprofits and businesses need help in bringing tools of finance, strategy, and marketing to acting on their social values. That’s where today’s MBA students can apply their skills to make a huge difference.   GN: So where do you foresee applications to this new way of thinking? Is consideration of SROI (Social Return on Investment) going to be a niche phenomenon?   CC:Well, let’s define this new way of thinking a bit. What’s new is that entrepreneurs and investors are recognizing that social ventures can reap rewards for society as well as for shareholders. It means that if you’re an entrepreneur, you have to define the kind of impact you want your business to have on the outside world. This means that while you may be acting on your values every day in your business, you have to get specific and start targeting goals that can be measured, and even adjusted over time.   Our work with the Global Social Venture Competition supports the field of social venturing by adding business discipline to the idea of having impact. Rather than creating just some compelling marketing messages, each entrant venture, and there have been over a thousand to date, must calculate the value of social return per dollar invested as well as financial return. What are the cost savings to the government if you employ low-income workers? What is the savings to the environment if you recycle your waste materials? What is the long-term value to society of child vaccinations, or great education in elementary schools? Honestly, I do not think this is a niche phenomenon. It’s the same as cost-benefit analysis and economists have been doing it for years. What’s new is that we’re applying the techniques to early-stage ventures and helping entrepreneurs to see the levers under their control to make a difference. We’re helping emerging ventures to build in their values from the outset. It’s a very powerful idea and that’s why so many entrepreneurs are interested in this approach.   GN: Can you give examples of any successful businesspeople that are concerned about social impacts – famous role models for students to emulate?   CC: Beyond the often-mentioned Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s, Anita Rodrick of the Body Shop and Paul Newman of Newman’s Own, there is a huge diversity of equally impressive social entrepreneurs. Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farms is an amazing pioneer (and is speaking at Columbia Business School’s Social Enterprise conference on October 24), and Will Rosenzweig, co-founder of Republic of Tea, works with the GSVC at Berkeley. And the list goes on: Smith and Hawken, Horizon Organics, Patagonia, ZipCar, Greyston Bakery, Voxiva, Edison. The investor side is impressive as well. Some of the country’s leading financiers have taken an interest in social ventures. Henry Kravis and George Roberts, co-founders of KKR, and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins have each established “double bottom line” investment funds or foundations to invest in social ventures.   GN: Tell us about the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC). Why is it important and where would you like to see it improve?   CC: The GSVC is one of the fastest-growing business plan competitions and one of the most innovative business school partnerships in pursuit of social value. A partnership of Columbia, UC Berkeley, London Business School and the Goldman Sachs Foundation, the GSVC aims to create a new generation of future business leaders that values both the profit and social potential of business. We run annual symposia, provide mentoring support to emerging social ventures, build on the field of SROI analysis, and run a global competition for emerging non-profit and for-profit social ventures and award prize money to winners totaling $100,000 each year.   The competition is important because we help emerging ventures and entrepreneurs, because it is driven by MBA student leadership – MBAs at the partner schools run the competition and MBAs at over 40 other programs have entered—and because it has helped educate and connect the very diversified community of social investors. We are not just awarding money to emerging entrepreneurs; we’re helping to build a community of people who believe in social ventures as an exciting vehicle for change. One area for improvement? We need to tell more stories and have more data about what social entrepreneurs are actually accomplishing – what’s hard, and what’s needed, and what works.   GN: We hear there are some exciting changes expanding the horizons of the competition. Can you talk about them?   CC: Sure. We just added a new partner – London Business School. Through London, we get to add mentoring for international ventures as well as a regional competition in Europe, where the movement around “green” investing and entrepreneurship has been much stronger than in the U.S. Another nice extra is that we are coordinating curriculum across three schools now; Will and I are teaching LBS’ course in social venturing this year and are looking to fold some cases that LBS has written into our own courses here and at Berkeley.   GN: What advice do you have for students who are interested in social venture in terms of a career?   CC: I have three pieces of advice: learn, lead, and network. One, take targeted courses relevant to social venturing. My course on Social Entrepreneurship runs in the spring and covers financing, measurement and management of over 15 social ventures, which will help you bring needed skills and models into this work. Intro to Venturing is also a good base. Two, take a leadership role and volunteer to be an organizer for the GSVC. You’ll emerge with contacts in this area from all over the world. Three, find a way to work directly with a social venture. You can intern, do a consulting project, take a job, but there is nothing like direct experience in a venture to show you what this work is really like, even if later you want to be a social investor. One of the best aspects of this field is that most people love what they do – you’ll find out it can be very satisfying!