UnLtd, UK’s largest supporter of social entrepreneurs is launching a program with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to support social entrepreneurship in English universities and colleges.
There are a growing number of schools embracing social entrepreneurship in their programs.
In an interview with Keely Stevenson, CEO of Swiss-based investment advisory firm Bamboo Finance, her answer to whether an MBA education provided value in the work that she does is yes. She completed an MBA at Oxford, a school that also has a social entrepreneurship program. For someone with a political activist background, she found it useful to acquire hard skills, which in her case was finance, to help her launch a career in social enterprise. Her thought on business is one that creates an avenue for creating a world we want to live in and she notes there are a lot more schools are providing valuable programs in social entrepreneurship.
HEFCE will invest £1 million for developing resources, expertise, and infrastructure that will support the social entrepreneurial activities of staff and students in this 18-month program. The project will encourage social entrepreneurship and make it easier to start social ventures within higher education.
This spring, UnLtd will call for proposals to identify 25 universities and colleges as key partners of the program. Participating institutions will need to match any investment for funding this program. These institutions will be able to leverage a network of local business professionals from UnLtd Connect to support and advise social entrepreneurs. There are also plans for HEFCE-funded universities and colleges to share good practice and resources.
The establishment of this program follows the success of the Higher Education Social Entrepreneurship Awards by UnLtd which provides financial and non-financial support for social enterprises. There were 200 social ventures established in 70 higher education institutions between 2009 and 2011.