How Can Youth-Led Social Ventures Find Support?

Social enterprise offers young people a chance to realize their ideas for change, develop their leadership skills, and serve their communities. Several innovative national and local resources offer youth and student social entrepreneurs a range of funding, education and training opportunities.

• Do Something: Grants of $500 awarded weekly to help young people, age 25 and under, move their ideas into action by growing sustainable community action projects, programs and organizations. News on additional funding opportunities provided throughout the year.

• Ewing Marion Kauffman: Supports programs and initiatives to sustain the creativity, enthusiasm, and inventive spirit in young people throughout their lives.

• Global Social Venture Competition: Organized by the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in partnership with Columbia Business School, London Business School, Indian School of Business, and Thammasat University (Thailand), this is the largest and oldest student-led business plan competition for social ventures from around the world. Supported in partnership with University of Geneva (Switzerland), ESSEC Business School (France), Yale School of Management, Catholic University of Milan (Italy), and a consortium of business schools in Korea, entrant teams from around the world compete for over $45,000 in cash and travel prizes, while gaining valuable connections to future leaders, business insights and exposure to the broader field of social issues, and support from experts on the creation of real businesses that bring about positive social change in a sustainable manner.
• Global Student Entrepreneur Awards: Premiere award for students owning and running businesses while attending a college or university. Selected applicants compete against peers, presenting businesses to a panel of judges for feedback through regional and national stages to advance to the finals for $150,000 worth of donated business services.
• National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance: Helps teams of college students, faculty, and firms collaborate to bring innovative technology projects with social benefit to market through the Advanced E-Team Grants program.
• Net Impact: Network of socially aware MBAs, graduate students, young professionals and selected undergraduate chapters who leverage their influence to benefit society, the economy, and the environment through resources, tools, and partnerships.
• Public Allies: Identifying talented young leaders from diverse and under-represented backgrounds with a passion for making a difference and creating a more just society as a career. Through full-time paid apprenticeships in nonprofit organizations in their communities, they create, improve and expand services that address priority issues while receiving leadership skills and development delivered by community leaders, practitioners and educators,towards individual performance and professional goals
• Sparkseed: Offers college students a comprehensive two-year development program including consultation services, access to training and technology, partnerships and seed money of up to $1000 to expand a social innovation idea.
• Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE): Connects student, leadership in higher education, business executives to use the knowledge gained in the classroom to address real world business and economic issues in their communities, particularly through the SIFE World Cup challenge, which gathers community outreach and social enterprise projects from around the world for competition and cultural exchange.
• Youth Venture: Guides young people through the process of designing and launching social ventures, providing seed funding of up to $1,000, support network among fellow social entrepreneurs (including partnership with Ashoka, a leading international funder of social enterprises), mentoring and expertise, and affinity among a youth-led movement towards social change.

More than simply a buzzword, social enterprises represent an opportunity to support efforts that deliver positive lifelong benefits for youth leaders, communities, and the world beyond.