Social Entrepreneurship

SOCIAL ENTREPRENUERSHIP: REVOLUTIONIZING SOCIAL CHANGE EFFORTS BY IMPLEMENTING BUSINESS STRATEGIES
A research project submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
Master of Business Administration Holly Joy White-Wolfe
CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read SOCIAL ENTREPRENUERSHIP: REVOLUTIONIZING SOCIAL CHANGE EFFORTS BY IMPLEMENTING BUSINESS STRATEGIES by Holly Joy White-Wolfe, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a research project submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the Master of Business Administration degree at San Francisco State University.
________________________________________ John Dopp, Professor, Management
________________________________________ Michael Meeks, Assistant Professor, Management
ABSTRACT SOCIAL ENTREPRENUERSHIP: REVOLUTIONIZING SOCIAL CHANGE EFFORTS BY IMPLEMENTING BUSINESS STRATEGIES Holly Joy White-Wolfe San Francisco State University Fall Semester, 2007
The purpose of this project is to explore the quickly growing, new business sector of Social Entrepreneurship, which is bringing contemporary business strategies to the non-profit and government sectors. The methods used to explore the topic include a literature review of text books, journal articles, and trade websites, as well as a case study of the County of Sonomas Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Programs social change endeavor. Universities, foundations, text book authors and other practitioners offer various definitions for the term social entrepreneur. This paper establishes a summary definition: A social entrepreneur exhibits the traditional characteristics of an entrepreneur such as vision, resourcefulness, and persistence but has the unique aim of measurably transforming social problems and propelling sustainable social change. Social Entrepreneurs are transforming social change efforts through applying entrepreneurial skills and other business principles. While the term social entrepreneurship is often assigned to an array of social change efforts, this paper affirms: successful social entrepreneurship initiatives feature innovative solutions to social problems that generate funding or other resources to sustain its efforts and ultimately transform social systems. Social Entrepreneurship innovations engage marginalized or impacted groups through one of three approaches: building capacity, disseminating packages, or creating movements. These initiatives fundamentally change economic, political, and cultural contexts and transform social problems. Social Entrepreneurs have
tremendous potential for revolutionizing social change efforts, and governments and nonprofits across the globe can achieve greater impact on social problems by aligning with these change leaders.
I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the contents of this research project. _______________________________________ John Dopp, Professor, Management _____________________ (Date)
Table of Contents
Title Page Certificate of Approval Abstract Table of Contents List of Figures Introduction Defining Social Entrepreneurship Social Entrepreneurs Emerge to Revolutionize Social Change Efforts The Emergence of Social Entrepreneurs Examples of revolutionary change efforts x xi xii xiv xv 1 2 11 11 17
Case Study Analysis: County of Sonomas Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Programs 21 Social Change Endeavor Case Study Selection Methods Social Problem Overview: Social Entrepreneur Emerges 21 22 23 24
Analyzing Sonoma Countys Efforts Through the Lens of Alvord et als Successful 34 Social Entrepreneurship Hypotheses Case Study Analysis Case Study Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography Appendix 37 60 62 65
List of Figures
Public Health Triangle
27
Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration Strategic Prevention 30 Framework
Alvord et als Nine Hypotheses: Factors Associated with Successful Social Entrepreneurship 36-37
SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
SOCIAL ENTREPRENUERSHIP: REVOLUTIONIZING SOCIAL CHANGE EFFORTS BY IMPLEMENTING BUSINESS STRATEGIES

Social entrepreneurship is an emerging business concept that is generating enthusiasm and support from business, government and nonprofit sectors alike. While many authors, universities, and foundations use the term with variations on the definition, it is clear that a new generation of entrepreneurs are bringing contemporary business strategies to the nonprofit and government sectors. This specialized form of entrepreneurship is used in the social arena achieve the double bottom line of both social impact and strong financial standing. These strategic efforts are revolutionizing the way business is conducted in the nonprofit and government sectors. The aim of this paper is four-fold. One goal is to explore the definition of social entrepreneurship and the nuances of its meaning among users. A second goal is to examine how social entrepreneurship emerged to revolutionize social change efforts. A third goal is to present a case study of the County of Sonomas Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention programs social change endeavor. This case study provides a model of social entrepreneurship applied in the government and nonprofit sectors. Finally, the paper concludes with a look at the future of social entrepreneurship in the government and nonprofit arena.
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Defining Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is a term that has recently become vogue. Journals and other publications publish articles detailing the subject; authors use the phrase in book titles; foundations are providing social entrepreneurship funding and awards to leading individuals; universities offer programs to train social entrepreneurs; annual conferences bring together the newly developing field; and documentaries trace successful social entrepreneurship activities. Many journals feature articles on the subject of government and nonprofit sector enterprises or entrepreneurs applying their skills in the social arena. These articles weave together the concepts of traditional entrepreneurship with a new focus on foundations and nonprofits implementing business practices. Business publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Fast Company, and Brand Strategy to trade publications such as the Forest Products Society have featured related articles. New terms and phrases such as venture capitalism, philanthrocapitalism, the triple bottom line, social investing, making a profit making a difference, strategic philanthropy, or the business of giving abound in articles discussing the new business forces in the social sector. Over time, the phrase social entrepreneurship has been used to encapsulate many of these concepts. The first publication to officially tackle the subject of defining social entrepreneurship is the 2001 article entitled The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship written by Gregory Dees, Director of Duke Universitys Fuqua School of Businesss Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE). In this article Dees says that while the terminology social entrepreneurship is new, the phenomena of the
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blurring of the business and nonprofit sectors is responsible for many of the institutions we now take for granted. He offers todays university system as an example of an institution developed by early social entrepreneurs. He ties the popularity of the concept of social entrepreneurship to the confusing, and loose usage of the term by differing groups. He goes back to the root of the word entrepreneur first used by 17th Century economists, and then traces the emerging definition used by todays economists. Dees quotes historic economists definitions of entrepreneurs as venturesome individuals who stimulated economic progress by finding new and better ways of doing things, or those who exploit opportunities that change technology, consumer preference, and social norms. (Dees, 1998) Most authors of articles on the subject of social entrepreneurship similarly sight the term entrepreneurship and these original definitions as core to the definition of social entrepreneurship, agreeing that the definition of social entrepreneur must have some congruence with the definition of entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial characteristics are often cited in works on the subject. Permeating discussions are such terms as ability to marshal resources, unite diverse constituents, envision systems change, bold actions, drive, determination, and attraction to opportunities to exploit suboptimal market equilibriums to create new solutions, products or processes. However, entrepreneurs in the social sector are described as a specialized brand of entrepreneur who have the concern of creating financial returns as well as the added concern of creating social returns for their efforts. For example, Dees describes his social entrepreneur as leading change in the social sector, by:
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adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value); recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission; engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning; acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand; and exhibiting heightened accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created. (Dees, 1998, p. 4)
David Bornstein, New York Times journalist and award winning author of The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, wrote his 2004 book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas about the study of individual social entrepreneurs. He defines social entrepreneurship as the activity of visionary individuals who gather resources, build institutions, and relentlessly work towards advancing systemic change. (Bornstein, 2004, pp 1-3) The individuals he deemed social entrepreneurs develop innovative solutions to problems, take initiative to implement the solutions, and continually improve on their own ideas until their solutions shift behaviors or perception, which ultimately become permanent social systems or institutions. (Bornstein, 2004, p. 3) For example, he highlights the efforts of Florence Nightingales work in 19th Century England to revolutionize the nursing field. He credits Nightingales drive, focus, and practically applied creativity for transforming military hospitals and improving care for injured soldiers through the innovative approach of supplying minimally skilled nurses. (Bornstein, 2004, pp 40-46) Bill Drayton, founder of the social entrepreneurship foundation named Ashoka, claims he coined the term social entrepreneurship. He created this term to describe the
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efforts of the almost two-thousand entrepreneurs his foundation has supported in sixty different countries. (Drayton, 2006) Drayton offers his own definition for social entrepreneurs as: Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to societys most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps. Social entrepreneurs often seem to be possessed by their ideas, committing their lives to changing the direction of their field. They are both visionaries and ultimate realists, concerned with the practical implementation of their vision above all else. Each social entrepreneur presents ideas that are user-friendly, understandable, ethical, and engage widespread support in order to maximize the number of local people that will stand up, seize their idea, and implement with it. In other words, every leading social entrepreneur is a mass recruiter of local changemakersa role model proving that citizens who channel their passion into action can do almost anything. (Drayton, 2006) As the concept gained interest in both the nonprofit and business sectors, demand increased for learning opportunities and implementation support. In 2001 Dees, Emerson, and Economy wrote Enterprising Nonprofits: A Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurs. Dees shares his expertise as the Hass Centennial Professor in Public Service at Stanford, director of the Center for Social Innovation at Stanfords Graduate School of Business, and entrepreneur-in-residence at Kauffman Foundations Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The book is offered to nonprofit sector leaders struggling with financial competition with other
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nonprofits, growing demand for outcomes, and declining funding sources. The book focuses on practical tools for developing entrepreneurial skills that contribute to greater positive, long-term social impact. The goal of the book is to translate the practices of forprofit firms to practices that can be used in the nonprofit world, and to help leaders be more enterprising. Dees et al posit the controversial idea that no one is born being an entrepreneur, and says that nonprofit leaders can develop the necessary skills and characteristics over time through the use of his book. The book provides a set of management tools and exercises for nonprofit leaders to become both innovative and resourceful, couple passion with the discipline used in business, take calculated risks, understand the markets where mission is pursued, and create social impact that is sustainable. (Dees et al, 2001) Adapting an article written by Bygrave about the Ten Characteristics of an Entrepreneur for the social entrepreneur, Dees et al defines a social entrepreneur in terms of his characteristics including: dreamers, decisiveness, doers, determination, dedication, devotion, details, destiny, dollars, distribution. (Dees et al, 2001, p. 6) Dees et al additionally cite five behaviors of a social entrepreneur as: 1) adopting a mission to create and sustain social value 2) recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission 3) engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation and learning 4) acting boldly without being limited to resources currently in hand; and 5) exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created (Dees et al, 2001, pp 4-5)
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Peter Brinkckerhoff, president of the global consulting firm Corporate Alternatives, is the author of nonprofit text books used in many universities, including one on the topic of social entrepreneurialism. The Alliance for Nonprofit Management gave him the Terry McAdam Award for his mission-based book series published in 2000, including Social Entrepreneurship: The Art of Mission-Based Venture Development. Brinkckerhoff dispels the myth that business skills do not apply to nonprofits by illustrating how nonprofits are in fact mission-based businesses that like other businesses find success through good marketing, financial accounting savvy, asset management, and use of technology. He provides a step by step plan for writing a business plan that focuses on mission, not money as the bottom line. His business plan includes focusing on client wants and needs, aligning the nonprofits core competencies with client desires, scanning the market for risk and opportunity, developing new revenue generating projects, testing project feasibility, projecting finances, and finding new sources of funding. In addition, he details how social entrepreneurship is a concept that must stem from a leader and permeate an organization. Brinkcherhoffs social entrepreneur displays 6 characteristics: 1) constantly looking for new ways to serve their constituencies and to add value to existing services; 2) willing to take on reasonable risk on behalf of the people that their organization serves; 3) understand the difference between needs and wants; 4) understand that all resource allocations are really stewardship investments; 5) weigh the social and financial return of each of these investments; and
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6) always keep mission first, but know that without money, there is no mission output. (Brinkckerhoff, 2000, p. 12) Several universities now offer programs specializing in the study of social entrepreneurship, including Columbia University, Duke University, Stanford, Harvard, New York University, Pace University, Santa Clara University, Oxford University, and the University of Alberta. Colleges, specializations, and research centers at these institutions house resources, sponsor annual conferences, and offer working opportunities for students seeking to develop social change skills. In the view of the academic field, social entrepreneurship is quickly becoming established as a vocation that can be learned. New York Universitys Stern School of Business defines social entrepreneurship as the process of using entrepreneurial and business skills to create innovative approaches to social problems. Through sheer determination and innovative thinking, social entrepreneurs are transforming today's society and working to educate our youth, protect our environment, defend human rights, and alleviate hunger and homelessness, among other issues. These nonprofit and for profit ventures pursue the double bottom line of social impact and financial self-sustainability or profitability. (Stern Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, 2006) Each definition offered features, as Bornestien points out, a focus on how business and management skills can be applied to achieve social ends for example, how nonprofits can operate for-profit ventures to generate revenues (Bornstein, 2004, p.1). However, it is important not to simply imagine social entrepreneurship as the transformation of nonprofits through the use of better business practices. The term also should not be used to describe all change efforts in the nonprofit arena. As Martin and
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Osberg point out in their 2007 paper Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition, the term needs rigorous definition to distinguish its resulting social innovations from traditional social change efforts. Valuable solutions to social problems such as replication or expansion of an existing service or product may produce positive impacts but not require entrepreneurship. Alternatively, Entrepreneurship would side step the problem of expensive replication or expansion and creatively reconfiguring existing resources to offer a new product or service with wider, more effective delivery. True Social Entrepreneurship must accomplish both the attainment of ongoing resources to sustain its effort as well as create innovative solutions to social problems. (Alvord et al, 2002) Two other critical elements in defining Social Entrepreneurship involve the entrepreneurial spirit that must be infused in the definition as well as the metric for defining success. The force behind social enterprise lies in the entrepreneurial characteristics such as vision, determination, and persistence. Relentless pursuit of mission, creative use of resources, and the drive to work through all obstacles until systemic change is achieved, are inherent aspects of social entrepreneurship. Alvord, Brown and Letts support the idea that entrepreneurial principles often lie behind the successful social innovations that address complex social problems in their 2002 paper Social Entrepreneurship and Social Transformation: An Exploratory Study. However, they suggest that entrepreneurs in the business sector and entrepreneurs in the social sector have two divergent measures of success. Both strive to offer innovation in the market place causing system or market wide change, however, The test of successful business entrepreneurship is the creation of a viable and growing business, embodied in the survival and expansion of a business organization. The test of social entrepreneurship in contrast,
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may be a change in the social dynamics and systems that created and maintained the problem and the organization created to solve the problem may get smaller or less viable as it succeeds. (Alvord et al, 2002) Additionally, the success of the Social Entrepreneur is not measured by the financial bottom line as in the business world, nor is it simply measured by the proliferation of a nonprofits mission statement. While some nonprofits are learning to generate revenues to help fund social change efforts, profit is not usually the goal of the Social Entrepreneur. As Martin and Osberg posit, the aim of the social entrepreneur is systemic change. (Martin et al, 2007) However, social entrepreneurs must often create financial resources to support their efforts. Unlike the traditional business market that can pay for innovation and even provide returns for investors, the social entrepreneurs market is usually a highly disadvantaged population that lacks the financial means or political clout to achieve the transformative benefit on its own. (Martin et al, 2007) Successful social entrepreneurship involves both: financial self sufficiency as well as measurable social impact. Drawing from all of the expertise thus far provided, I now offer a summarized definition of a social entrepreneur that I will use for the remainder of this paper: A social
entrepreneur exhibits the traditional characteristics of an entrepreneur such as vision, resourcefulness, and persistence but has the unique aim of measurably transforming social problems and propelling sustainable social change. I propose
defining successful social entrepreneurship as: innovative solutions to social problems
that generate funding or other resources to sustain its efforts and ultimately transform social systems.
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Social Entrepreneurs Emerge to Revolutionize Social Change Efforts

Social Entrepreneurs are bringing contemporary business strategies to the nonprofit sector and revolutionizing social change efforts. How did they emerge? What are current examples of revolutionary change efforts?
The Emergence of Social Entrepreneurs

Over the past century, rapid growth and changes in the nonprofit sector marketplace created opportunities for Social Entrepreneurs to surface. Suboptimal marketplace equilibrium, arising from shifting political architecture, declining government power, globalization, and information technology, created growing opportunities for innovation and leadership in the social arena. In addition, a growing citizen movement around the globe reveals a developing acceptance and encouragement of individual action as citizens mobilize to battle pervasive social issues such as poverty and inequality. Increasing corporate wealth and a growing number of successful entrepreneurs additionally changed the focus of foundations who provide financial support to the nonprofit sector. Todays business leaders want their dollars to go to nonprofits that apply business principles of strategy, innovation, continual improvement, accountability, and achieve bottom line results. Such expectations from the business community further create a demand for individuals with an entrepreneurial orientation to enter the marketplace.
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The combined effects of political and economic changes, explosive nonprofit growth, and the new orientation of foundations in the nonprofit sector market created a market opening for social entrepreneurs. Global Political and Economic Changes David Bornstein introduces How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by analyzing the recent changes in the nonprofit sector market place. He reveals the shifting political architecture, declining government power, globalization, and information technology, that led to radical changes in the landscape of the nonprofit sector. Quoting many concepts from an article printed in a 1999 World Watch article entitled: Action on the Front Lines, Bornstein illustrates how governments are increasingly relying on nonprofit groups to provide leadership and help implement solutions to such problems as providing health services, monitoring ozone depletion, and protecting endangered species. Bornstein additionally pulls examples from Action on the Front Lines to reveal the large number of developing countries shifting away from centralized governments. Citizen based nonprofit groups in these countries are now being encouraged to be innovative, are gaining greater lobbying power, and are given access to decision makers. In addition, many citizens want to take social problems in their own hands as faith in governments to manage social endeavors declines. (Zak, 2005) People dont expect politicians to do anything I dont expect politicians to do anything, said Tim Wirth a former US Senator and Under-Secretary of State who is now head of the nonprofit UN
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Foundation. Thats why more and more people are moving to grassroots activities. (Runyan, 1999) There is greater concern for impacts on the environment and human rights as industry spreads across the globe. Globalization inspires many citizens to take action to ensure that new corporate wealth creation does not equate further environmental degradation, health problems and poverty issues in developing countries. The Action on the Front Lines article uses this quote by a London based group to demonstrate the important role of nonprofit action: The Limitations on the power and influence of the states and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the UN, have enhanced the importance of NGOs, which argue they are fulfilling a vital role when they call attention to commercial abuse or injustice which might otherwise be ignored. David Bornstein also points out that there is a greater awareness about social problems during an interview with Social Innovations Conversations: Globe Shakers host Tim Zak: Often times the heads of state may have less information than an active citizen with a personal computer. Information technology provides concerned citizens with the tools to find and share information, build networks with other concerned individuals and nonprofit groups, and to make a call to action.
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Explosive Growth of the Nonprofit Sector The explosive growth of nonprofits shows a growing trend for individual action. Curtis Runyan, author of Action on the Front Lines (1999), declares nonprofits, or non government organizations (NGOs) as they are known globally, give hundreds of millions of people a community based opportunity to address social problems such as poverty and environmental abuses. These recently formed grassroots organizations are often connected to networks of similarly focused nonprofits around the world, giving local groups a global presence and significant political power. For example, between 1980 and 1990 more than 100,000 NGOs formed to address environmental degradation issues. These organizations were flooded by new members anxious to take action, with organizations like the World Wide Fund for Nature growing from just 570,000 members to more than 5 million. (Runyan, 1999) Action on the Front Lines reveals such growth in the nonprofit sector has been documented around the globe: In the United States, 70% of registered nonprofits are less than 30 years old. Half of all NGOs operating in Europe were founded after 1990. In 1909 there were 176 international NGOs. Since the 90s the number of international organizations increased from 6,000 30,000. (Runyan, 1999)
New Foundation Orientation Increasing corporate wealth and a growing number of successful entrepreneurs additionally changed the focus of foundations in the nonprofit sector marketplace.
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Todays business leaders want their dollars to go to nonprofits that apply business principles of strategy, innovation, continual improvement, accountability, and achievement of bottom line results. Such expectations from the business community further create a demand for individuals with an entrepreneurial orientation to enter the marketplace. Demand for entrepreneurial orientation in the nonprofit community is directly linked to the growing number of entrepreneurs in the business community. Of the worlds 691 billionaires, more than half are entrepreneurs. (Economist Staff Writer, Business of Giving, 2006) Many of these entrepreneurs became self made billionaires during the technology boom of the 1990s. Philanthropy among these individuals emerged as a way to gain popularity and notoriety with the public in recent years. For example, Bill Gates sheds the publics opinion of him as a monopolistic mogul by becoming a leader in charitable giving. He has given away more than $30 billion to fight world poverty. (Economist Staff Writer, Business of Giving, 2006) Many business entrepreneurs made their fortunes through strategic actions and thoughtful investing, and want to support nonprofits who can apply these same business principles. They use their financial support as leverage to put their own professional stamp on the philanthropy business. (Institutional Investor International Staff Writer, 2004) The philanthropists of our current era are increasingly viewing themselves as charitable investors seeking social returns. (Letts et al, 1997) They want high engagement opportunities to work with groups who know how to deliver needed services to clients and then communicate measurable outcomes back to the investors as stakeholders. (Institutional Investor International Staff Writer, 2004) In fact, some
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foundations and donors are borrowing from the venture capital firm model, and are offering grants that include management support and capital to support organizational development to help nonprofits become more business like. (Letts et al, 1997) While nonprofits can appreciate the distribution systems, scaling strategies, marketing savvy, and technological know how of the business community (Dahle, 2006), translating business principles into addressing difficult social problems remains difficult for most nonprofits. Foundations and donors are frustrated by this inability to adapt. However, according to Mario Morino of Venture Philanthropy Partners, one of Americas leading venture philanthropists, The new rich have often made their money very fast, and get intoxicated with their own brilliance into thinking they can quickly achieve results in the nonprofit sector. They forget that their success may have been due to luck and that the nonprofit sector may be far more complex than where they have come from. (Economist Staff Writer, 2006) A cyclical problem arises when funders are frustrated by lack of nonprofit management capacity, but only offer short-term grants that dont allow for the time needed to achieve the long-term goal of capacity development. (Economist Staff Writer, 2006) A Harvard Business Review 2006 article called Disruptive Innovation for Social Change by Christensen et al sums up nonprofits difficulties saying that organizations become tied to their existing business models, resources, processes, and partners, which makes it difficult and unappealing for them to change their prevailing way of conducting business. V. Kasturi Rangan, in another article by Harvard Business Review entitled Lofty Missions, Down to Earth Plans adds further insight to the nonprofit management dilemma with this articulate summation:
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Most nonprofits make program decisions based on a mission rather than a strategy. They rally under the banner of a particular cause, be it "fight homelessness" or "end hunger." And since their causes are so worthwhile, they support any programs that are related--even tangentially--to their core missions. It's hard to fault people for trying to improve the state of the world, but that approach to making decisions is misguided. Acting without a clear long-term strategy can stretch an agency's core capabilities and push it in unintended directions. The fundamental problem is that many nonprofits don't have a strategy; instead, they have a mission and a portfolio of programs. But they hardly make deliberate decisions about which programs to run, which to drop, and which to turn down for funding. What most nonprofits call "strategy" is really just an intensive exercise in resource allocation and program management. (Rangan, 2004)
Summary Social entrepreneurs have heard their call around the globe. With governments throughout the world engaging citizens as partners in addressing social problems, thousands of nonprofits poised for action, and foundations and donors desperately seeking entrepreneurs to make the best use of their resources, social entrepreneurs are finding ample opportunities for applying their visions for social change.
Examples of Revolutionary Change Efforts

One incredible example of how social entrepreneurs are addressing one of the worlds greatest social problems is the successful reduction of poverty through the microfinance movement. Consider the overwhelming problem of world poverty:
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Around the globe an astounding 1.2 billion or one in five people, struggle to stay alive on less than $1 everyday. Three billion people, or half of us living on the planet, barely subsist on $2 a day. An unconscionable 23,000 children under age five die every single day of largely preventable diseases such as pneumonia, malaria, measles, diarrhea, and malnutrition. One billion people entered the 21st century unable to sign their names, much less read a book, and two-thirds of them are women. One hundred million children of primary school age cannot attend school because their families lack the funds for school fees, uniforms, books, or sometimes, even shoes. Afraid of, intimidated by, or unable to access or afford clinic-based healthcare, at least one woman dies every minute from complications due to childbirth, leaving one million motherless children behind. Armed conflicts, the virulent HIV/AIDS epidemic and natures wrath earthquakes, tsunamis, drought compound these heart-wrenching devastations of an unimaginable number of livelihoods and lives. (Whitaker, 2007, p. xii) Mr. Muhammad Yunus, economics professor, recently received the Nobel Prize for founding the microfinance movement in 1976. Mr. Yunus began by giving personal loans in the equivalent amount of $27 to 42 workers in a Bangladesh village, and went on to found the Grameen bank. The Grameen Bank offers small loans and business training programs to help poor people gain financial stability, and effectively bypassed traditional government responses to poverty alleviation. The Grameen bank has issued loans averaging $175 to more than 2 million borrowers (94% women) with a 97% repayment rate. (Runyan, 1999) A group lending approach allows microcredit loans to be disbursed without collateral, while simultaneously bringing women together as leaders and co-investors. The business model proved profitable, and the social impact could not be ignored. Now hundreds of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) have sprung up across the globe. Todays microfinance products include many traditional banking products as well as additional financial services such as credit, savings, remittance
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services, life insurance, health insurance, and business insurance. (Whitaker, 2007, p. xvi) Dana Elizabeth Whitaker in her 2007 book Transforming Lives $40 at a Time uses photography and story to demonstrate how the microfinance movement is giving tiny loans to impoverished women with tremendous impact on the worlds leading social problems. Micro loans and training programs help these women to eradicate poverty in their families and villages. (See her photo of Dreamweaver below for examples of photos included in Whitakers book.) Suddenly women and their families have money for more nutritious food, improved housing, access to education, and money for healthcare. With the group lending approach, women are given important roles as leaders and investors in the larger communitys financial stability. Through unprecedented leadership and self sufficiency, women are defying demeaning gender roles as they gain confidence in their personal abilities. Women are demonstrating to their daughters and sons that women can financially provide for their families. In fact, these women are often called micro entrepreneurs, as their characteristic resourcefulness and determination that once allowed them
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to prolong their familys survival is now applied to launching a business. Microfinance is a supreme example of social entrepreneurship as it uses entrepreneurship to transform a social problem and creates long lasting change through its inherent sustainability. The change activities, selling financial products to help impoverished people earn an improved living, generate fees and interest which allows for ever more issuing of loans for more business start-ups. Practitioners praise Mr. Yunus for his innovation, and wonder at the factors influencing his success. In the 2002 working paper Social Entrepreneurship and Social Transformation: An Exploratory Study, Alvord, Brown, and Letts use the Grameen project as a study in how social entrepreneurship creates innovative solutions to immediate social problems and also mobilizes ideas, capacities, resources, and social arrangements required for longterm sustainable, social transformations. They examine the Grameen project, along with six other projects, to create hypotheses about factors tied to successful social entrepreneurial projects. Additional examples of social entrepreneurship projects which have created system change or have potential to do so include: the Green Belt Movement, the Self-Employed Womens Association, and Plan Puebla. The Green Belt Movement focuses on environmental preservation. The Self-Employed Womens Association and Plan Puebla focus on eradicating poverty through improved working conditions. (Alvord et al, 2002) These transformative efforts provide excellent case studies of social entrepreneurship in action, and will serve as comparison studies for the County of Sonomas social entrepreneurship endeavor in the next section.
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Case Study Analysis: County of Sonomas Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Programs Social Change Endeavor
This case study traces the County of Sonomas Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention teams experience in engaging in social entrepreneurship. The study begins with an explanation of how this project was selected as a case study. Next, the methods for documenting the case are described. The examination of the project begins with an overview of the social problem and the emergence of a local social entrepreneur. Then the project is analyzed by using the Alvord et al framework for successful social entrepreneurship. The case concludes with a final look at the potential for revolutionary change in the alcohol and other drug problem arena.
Case Study Selection

I selected the County of Sonomas social change endeavor as a case study for analyzing how social entrepreneurship can revolutionize social change efforts for two reasons: my involvement in the project and the opportunity to document social entrepreneurship applied to the public health arena in the United States. I served as the Project Manager for the County of Sonomas Strategic Prevention Framework process, which entailed leading an intense community planning process to direct an annual allotment of $350,000 state dollars to address alcohol and other drug problems. The Countys staff is committed to achieving long-term change in community health, and used the Strategic Prevention Framework planning process to break away from
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traditionally low impact change efforts. My team used the help of a local social entrepreneur to help redirect our efforts towards innovative, sustainable changes. The policies and programs introduced by our social entrepreneur show the potential for achieving large scale change for public health across the United States, and I am excited to document this project which can be replicated in other counties and states.
Methods
The information contained in this case study was gathered through personal experience and interviewing. All planning and implementation activities are evidenced by a Strategic Prevention Framework Project Management Report and Microsoft Project spreadsheet attached in Appendix C. Personal testimony and insights were recorded through San Francisco State approved interviews, which are also attached Appendix DF. Background information including facts about alcohol and other drug problems and prevention approaches appearing in this report are substantiated by two documents included in Appendix A-B: 1.) Planning for Community-Based Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug-Related Problems in Sonoma County Step 1: Assessment; and 2.) Sonoma County Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Framework: Strategic Plan for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention 2007-2010. These reports were developed as part of the Strategic Prevention Framework process, and are used as resources for educating the community at large about the County of Sonomas new innovative efforts.
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SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP Social Problem Overview:

Alcohol and other drugs are responsible for huge social costs, community problems, and health issues across the United States. Consider these facts excerpted from the 2007 Planning for Community-Based Prevention of Alcohol and Other DrugRelated Problems in Sonoma County Step 1: Assessment report:
Underage drinking is a serious problem that costs the nation an estimated $62.6 billion each year in deaths, injuries, property damage, and related economic and productivity losses. More young people drink alcohol than use other illegal drugs, and alcohol is a factor in the three leading causes of death among youth (unintentional injuries, suicides, and homicides), killing more youth than all other illegal drugs combined. More than 75,000 deaths annually are attributable to excessive alcohol consumption, the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States. According to the World Health Organization, methamphetamine ranks among the most widely used illegal drugs in the world, second only to marijuana. In 2004, 1.4 million Americans aged 12 or older (representing 0.6% of the U.S. population) had used methamphetamine in the past year, and 600,000 had used it in the past month. The County of Sonoma reviewed existing data indicators and interviewed community stakeholders to determine three key problem areas in Sonoma County: Underage Alcohol Use and Related Problems Adult High-Risk Alcohol Use and Related Problems, and Methamphetamine Use and Related Problems.
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Problem data reveals that Sonoma Countys use rates and problems exceed state averages, and community stakeholders agreed that innovative approaches are needed to begin to make positive change. (See Planning for Community-Based Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug-Related Problems in Sonoma County Step 1: Assessment report in Appendix A for details.)
Social Entrepreneur Emerges

Earlier in this paper it was demonstrated that the demand for social entrepreneurs arose from political/economic changes, explosive nonprofit growth, and the new orientation of foundations. Similarly, the County of Sonoma found itself needing the help of a social entrepreneur to help develop new change efforts after a series of climatic changes in politics, the nonprofit arena, and government funding directions. Political Changes The national attitude towards alcohol and drug abuse can often be characterized as hopeless. President Nixon began the War on Drugs in 1972, but individual use rates have continued to climb. Federal and State Health Departments allocate funding annually to address alcohol and other drug-related problems, but often times this money has not translated into positive health outcomes. For example, more than 36 million children participated in the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program between 1983-1998, but evaluators found no evidence that the program was linked to behavior changes. The National Institute of Justice presented its Report to the United States Congress and concluded that D.A.R.E. does not work to reduce substance use.
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(Wikipedia, 2007) Traditional government efforts, generally targeting individual level change, often failed. However, beginning in 1990, the anti-tobacco movement began to make history in the public health arena through focusing prevention money on changing community environments through engaging local community members in policy changes. County Health Department staff were encouraged to form coalitions by bringing together law enforcement, teachers, clergy, students and other local people affected by tobacco problems. The coalitions were directed to look beyond blaming individual users and to instead look at the contributing factors of tobacco problems. Contributing factors included the proliferation of tobacco advertisements, the acceptance of smoking in public places like schools or restaurants, the high number of retailers, a high incidence of sales to minors, and other environmental factors. Community members began to feel targeted by tobacco companies looking for profits to the detriment of healthy communities. These incensed coalitions were then supported in leading large-scale campaigns to develop policies such as developing Assembly Bill -13, Californias law to outlaw smoking in restaurants and bars. (Personal Communication, 20062) Ultimately, engaging community members in addressing their own tobaccorelated problems helped to shape the communities consensus that smoking is unhealthy. A USA Today article California Says its Long Anti-Tobacco Campaign Has Paid Off summarizes Californias tremendous anti-smoking outcomes:
Personal Communication on February 27, 2006 with Kerry Andrade, Health Information Specialist with 17 years of Tobacco prevention experience.
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California's lung and bronchus cancer rates, which were higher than the national average in 1988, have since fallen three times faster than rates in the rest of the country. Incidence rates for five other tobacco-related cancers esophagus, larynx, bladder, kidney and pancreas are also lower in California than in the rest of the USA. Since 1988, the number of adults who smoke has fallen from 23% to 16%, one of the country's lowest rates, according to the health agency. (Szabo, 2005) In addition, a new generation of youth is able to grow up in a smoke-free environment. With smoke-free schools, homes, and restaurants, todays youth live in an environment that supports a smoke-free culture. "These kids represent the first generation of California youth to grow up in a state that is darn-near tobacco-free, says Kim Belshe, Secretary of Californias Health and Human Service Agency. High school smoking rates have fallen from 22% in 2000 to 13% in 2004, and middle-school smoking rates fell from 7% to 4% rates far lower than the national average, the state health agency said. More than 90% of California children today live in smoke-free homes. (Szabo, 2005) The coalition approach to changing community environments involved a whole new set of prevention activities, which in turn required a new skill set from anti-tobacco prevention practitioners. Suddenly, leaders were needed to marshal resources, develop a comprehensive vision for systems change, and implement innovative action at several levels simultaneously. Activities included rallying diverse groups, creating strategic action plans, developing marketing campaigns, drafting legislation, organizing press conferences, educating bar owners and other merchants about new laws, offering sales and distribution training programs for retail personnel, and more. In short, social entrepreneurs were called forward. Prevention practitioners in the substance abuse field began to make links between alcohol and tobacco prevention. Both Federal and State health departments
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issued grants to communities to explore applying environmental prevention strategies to reduce alcohol related problems. For example, in 2004, the California State Incentive Grant funds were directed by the governor to go towards reducing binge drinking rates through environmental strategies. Social entrepreneurs are now in demand to lead antialcohol community change efforts. Nonprofit Changes Traditionally, local nonprofits focused on working with individuals. In Sonoma County, alcohol and other drug prevention dollars exclusively funded nonprofits to implement individual-based prevention approaches, which generally includes counseling and education. However, anti-tobacco efforts proved other approaches could be more effective. The theoretical model of public health disease prevention demonstrated by the Public Health Triangle, offers three approaches to disease or problem control: changing individuals/hosts, environments, or agents.
AGENT
HOST
ENVIRONMENT
The host is defined as the individual being affected. The agent is the carrier or factor affecting health. The environment is defined as the community surrounding the
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problem. In the field of substance abuse, the host, agent, and environment are defined in Building Leadership for Community Development (2000) as the following: Agent: The agent is any legal or illegal drug (including alcohol and tobacco) capable of causing physical, interpersonal, emotional, social or economic harm to people or communities. Host: The host is a current, former or potential consumer of alcohol/drugs. Environment: The environment is the social, political and cultural settings in which the host and agent interact. (Levine et al, 2000) The County sought to build capacity in nonprofits for other approaches such as the environmental prevention approach by introducing the concept through annual workshops and trainings. While nonprofit staff agreed that it was difficult to help counsel or educate youth or adults in making behavior changes in an environment that promotes alcohol and other drug use, nonprofits did not feel prepared to redirect staff towards the environmental approach. Sonoma County nonprofits are largely staffed by counselors, youth workers, and other individuals with direct client service experience and these staff do not have the capacity to create a vision for wide scale community change, marshal resources, or develop sustainable, innovative change approaches. This lack of capacity equates a demand for a Social Entrepreneur to help train, lead and support nonprofits in developing innovative approaches to reducing alcohol and other drug problems.
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Funder Changes The County of Sonoma receives an annual allotment of funding through the State of Californias Alcohol and Drug Program. Like many other public agencies, the County of Sonoma contracts with local nonprofits to use these dollars to implement alcohol and other drug prevention programs. In recent years, the County attempted to reduce alcohol and other drug problems through acting as a high engagement funder. Contracts with nonprofits included funding to implement programs as well as capacity building support in the form of trainings and technical assistance from the County. In addition, the County tried to improve problem reduction outcomes through ensuring nonprofits implement science-based programs and evaluations. Specifically, the county funded nonprofits to offer model programs or replicated, proven programs that use structured counseling and educational services to help indivdiduals learn refusal skills, improve resiliency, and understand the harms caused by substance use. Attitude or behavior changes are measured through surveys. However, in the fall of 2005, the County decided that traditional, individualbased approaches are not generating intended impacts. Local health surveys such as the California Healthy Kids Survey showed that Sonoma County youth were drinking at rates above the average state level, and this rate of use has been increasing each year. The Sonoma County Health Profile documented the large number of adults engaging in highrisk drinking. An initial survey of methamphetamine problems, led by Board of Supervisors member Valerie Brown, showed a growing number of individuals using methamphetamine. These reports revealed that problems alcohol and other drug
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problems are increasing locally, despite more than $350,000 of annual county funded efforts aimed at alcohol and other drug prevention. At the same time, the federal governments Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) additionally expressed its desire for counties to improve outcomes, and required all states and counties to implement the Strategic Prevention Framework as a guiding framework for strategic planning. The five steps of the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) include: 1. Assessment: Profile population needs, resources, and readiness to address problems and gaps in service delivery.
2. Capacity: Mobilize and/or build capacity to address identified needs.
3. Planning: Develop a comprehensive strategic plan.
4. Implementation: Implement evidence based programs and infrastructure support.
5. Evaluation: Monitor, evaluate, sustain and improve or replace those programs and approaches that fail.
The initial problem data and the Federal requirement to engage in the Strategic Prevention Framework process gave the County of Sonoma the impetus to engage in a community planning process to further explore problem data, select new and innovative
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approaches, and develop new outcome measures. The County wanted to broaden the local communitys vision of alcohol and other drug related problems and prevention approaches. As stewards of $350,000 dollars of annual prevention funds, the staff also wanted help in leveraging resources and finding ways to sustain prevention efforts for the long-term. Like anti-tobacco efforts, the staff believed that large-scale community level change can be achieved, with youth and families one day living in an environment that supports a substance abuse-free culture.
Summary
Political changes resulting in a new government interest in community-level or environmental prevention, a lack of capacity in local nonprofits, and government funder interest in improved outcomes led to the search for a social entrepreneur.
Contracting with Mr. Michael Sparks, Center for Community Action and Training
The county contracted Mr. Michael Sparks of the Center for Community Action and Training (CCAT) to serve as their social entrepreneur. While Mr. Sparks has been too busy creating systems level change to have ever read about the concept of Social Entrepreneurship, his character traits meet the criteria for social entrepreneurship as described by field experts such as William Drayton or Gregory Dees. Mr. Sparks work for Columbia Universitys Free to Grow program demonstrates his ambition, persistence, and ability to tackle major social issues (Drayton, 2006). Through Free To Grow, Mr. Sparks helped craft a prevention model that integrates
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families and community strengthening to improve health outcomes for children. Using his Building Leadership for Community Development curriculum, he is guiding 15 sites across America in implementing prevention strategies through Head Start communitybased coalitions. This ambitious idea entails training and engaging low-income, uneducated parents in creating local policies and initiatives to improve health and safety for their children. Persistence and innovation are key to overcoming barriers (lack of transportation, childcare, or experience in civic action) to engaging this population of parents, but Mr. Sparks has led the development of 15 coalitions whose members are learning how to tackle community problems that impact health and safety for their children. These coalitions are engaging in policy development projects such as enacting zoning laws that restrict the number of alcohol retailers in neighborhoods. Mr. Sparks work is summed up in William Draytons quote: Each social entrepreneur presents ideas that are user-friendly, understandable, ethical, and engage widespread support in order to maximize the number of local people that will stand up, seize their idea, and implement with it. In other words, every leading social entrepreneur is a mass recruiter of local changemakersa role model proving that citizens who channel their passion into action can do almost anything. (Drayton, 2006) While Mr. Sparks consults for Columbia Universitys Free to Grow program, he is also relentlessly working on other alcohol and other drug prevention initiatives. He founded the Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems. The Marin Institute is a national advocacy resource that monitors and exposes the alcohol industry. The Institute empowers communities with information and resources to take action to limit the alcohol industrys harmful actions related to products, promotions and social influence. For example, the Marin Institute supported California
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efforts to ensure that alcopops or alcoholic beverages that look and taste like soda pop are more heavily regulated and taxed to help prevent underage consumption. As Gregory Dees says, Mr. Sparks: recognizes and relentlessly pursues new opportunities and exhibits a heightened accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created. (Dees, 2001) Mr. Sparks also works as a consultant to the State of California and county governments throughout the state that frequently hire him to lead trainings or to provide expertise in the field of coalition development, policy development, or other environmental prevention approaches. For example, the State of California contracted Mr. Sparks to do a literature review linking research and theory to the new practice of alcohol regulation through policy development. Tools for Regulating Local Alcohol Availability has become a core resource for prevention practitioners. He is rarely home, as when he is not working on one of his projects he is on an airplane flying to the next project location. In Mr. Sparks words he enjoys serving as a content expert, but he has the ultimate goal of passing on his expertise to communities by building their capacity to implement their own social change efforts without help. (Personal Communication, 20073) William Drayton says, Social entrepreneurs often seem to be possessed by their ideas, committing their lives to changing the direction of their field. They are both visionaries and ultimate realists, concerned with the practical implementation of their vision above all else. (Drayton, 2006) The County contracted with Mr. Sparks to serve as a Social Entrepreneur for a two year period. His goals include guiding Sonoma Countys Strategic Prevention Framework community planning process, and assisting in the development of several
Personal Communication with Michael Sparks on March 30, 2007. See transcripts in Appendix D.
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regional community coalitions charged with reducing alcohol and other drug-related problems.
Analyzing Sonoma Countys Efforts Through the Lens of Alvord et als Successful Social Entrepreneurship Hypotheses
Alvord, Brown, and Letts reviewed seven projects widely known to meet this papers definition of successful social entrepreneurship: offering innovative solutions to social problems; generating funding or other resources to sustain its efforts; and transforming social systems. Alvord et als paper offers the fields first case study analysis of social entrepreneurship efforts and social transformations. In looking across projects, the team hypothesized nine components that formed each projects revolutionary approach to creating at least some potential for social transformations. This paper offers an eighth case study of social entrepreneurship by reviewing Sonoma Countys project through the lens of Alvord et als nine hypotheses.
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Alvord et als Nine Hypotheses: Factors Associated with Successful Social Entrepreneurship Innovation Hypothesis 1: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives can take at least three forms including: Building local capacities to solve problems Providing packages needed to solve common problems, and Building local movements to deal with other powerful actors Hypothesis 2: Successful social entrepreneurship involves innovations that mobilize existing assets of marginalized groups to improve lives Hypothesis 3: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives emphasize learning by individuals and by the organization, if they operate on a large scale Characteristics of Leadership Hypothesis 4: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives are often founded by leaders with capacity to work with and build bridges among very diverse stakeholders Hypothesis 5: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives have leadership that is characterized by: Long-term commitment to the initiative; and Capacity to catalyze adaptation to emerging contextual challenges
Organizational and Institutional Features Hypothesis 6a: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives may expand their operations by: Organizational growth to expand the coverage of their programs Small organization in alliance with clients; and Small organization that offers technical assistance to larger organizations
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Organizational and Institutional Features (Continued) Hypothesis 6b: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives that expand their impacts by organizational growth must invest in management, staff development, and monitoring evaluation systems. Hypothesis 7: External relations of social entrepreneurship initiatives vary across innovation forms: Capacity building emphasizes attention to local constituents and resource providers; Package dissemination emphasizes attention to package users and disseminators; and Movement building emphasizes attention to members, allies, and target actors
How the venture expands and sustains its impacts to transform a larger system. Hypothesis 8: Scaling up strategies vary across forms of social entrepreneurship: Capacity building initiatives build on local concerns and assets to increase capacities for group self-help, and then scale up coverage for a wider range of clients; Package dissemination initiatives scale up coverage with service easily delivered to individuals or small groups by low-skill staff or affiliates; and Movement building initiatives expand and indirectly impact campaigns and alliances to influence activities of targets or allies. Hypothesis 9: Social transformation leverage and impacts vary across forms of social entrepreneurship: Capacity building initiatives that alter local norms, roles, and expectations can transform the cultural contexts in which marginalized groups live; Package distribution initiatives that provide tools and resources to enhance individual productivity can transform their economic circumstances; and Movement building initiatives that increase the voice of marginalized groups can transforms their political contexts and their ability to influence decisions
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Case Study Analysis

Hypothesis 1: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives can take at least three forms including: Building local capacities to solve problems Providing packages needed to solve common problems, and Building local movements to deal with other powerful actors In comparing seven known social entrepreneurship projects, Alvord, Brown and Letts found three common forms for social entrepreneurship initiatives including: building local capacities to solve problems, providing packages needed to solve common problems, and building local movements to deal with other powerful actors. In each instance, an organization assumes one core form, which is often supplemented by additional activities. The Sonoma County initiative combines all three approaches by simultaneously building local capacity, offering a package of approaches to solving alcohol and other drug-related problems, and by supporting a community-wide movement to deal with the powerful actors in the alcohol and drug industry. Sonoma County achieves this combined approach by funding local non-profits to form regional coalitions. The County then leads the non-profit coalition coordinators and coalitions in developing increased capacity, i.e. in depth understanding of community problems as well as skill development for addressing the problems. The county establishes a contract with the coalition to provide funding in exchange for implementing specific packaged community mobilizing activities that result in policy or social norm changes that lead to decreased alcohol and other drug usage. While the core initiative can be described as building local capacities to solve problems through the development of a coalition, the supplemental activities also
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become central to the initiative. The coalition implements packaged approaches to challenge the powerful actors in the Alcohol and Other drug industries. Mr. Sparks helped Sonoma County lead a test effort in one region of the county before the Department of Health Services completed the Strategic Prevention Framework planning process. This pilot, funded through the aforementioned Governors State Incentive Grant funds coalition helped demonstrate the potential of the environmental approach and gain community support for the Countys new idea to shift funding to coalitions. The test coalition, the South Sonoma County Coalition to Reduce Binge Drinking, provides an excellent example of Sonoma Countys incorporation of successful Social Entrepreneurship factors. As a first step towards building local capacities to solve problems, Mr. Sparks and the CCAT team helped the County develop a coalition. This process began with several initial staff meetings to identify a diverse range of community members who are impacted by alcohol related-problems and who have ties to particular community assets. For example, staff hypothesized that residents living near downtown bars and restaurants are likely negatively impacted by noise, vandalism, and other problems linked to alcohol consumption. Key resident leaders have the asset of being linked to other neighbors who could participate in supporting future coalition campaigns. After establishing a list of residents, law enforcement, parents, hospital staff, city planners, and other community members, Mr. Sparks, CCAT, and County staff divided the list and spent time developing relationships with each potential coalition member. Finally, all of the members were invited to the first coalition meeting. The meeting was carefully designed to inform each member of the potential alcohol-related problems impacting their community, and to make a call to action for each potential member to share their
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assets by joining the coalition. Mr. Sparks prepared a slide show demonstrating alcoholrelated problems across California and the US and then described how coalitions are proving to be an effective solution to these problems. Next, Mr. Sparks took steps to unfolding a packaged response to solving the common problem of alcohol-related problems negatively impacting communities. The packaged response involves using the steps of the Strategic Prevention Framework as well as drawing from a list of proven environmental strategies for project implementation. The five Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) steps include: 1.) Assessment, 2.) Capacity Development, 3.) Planning, 4.) Implementation, 5.) Evaluation. Mr. Sparks immediately engaged the coalition in collecting data about alcoholrelated problems specific to the South Sonoma County community. He knew that gathering the data would be essential to help three SPF steps: assessment, capacity building, and evaluation. During the second coalition meeting and before sending coalition members to collect data, Mr. Sparks offered a mini-training on using data. Knowing that most people immediately look at alcohol-related problems by analyzing individual use rates, he helped the group to look beyond individuals to consider how alcohol-related problems appear at the community level. For example, instead of looking at just the number of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) citations in South Sonoma County, he encouraged the coalition to look at the contributing factors that led to the occurrence of DUIs. Contributing factors could include bar staff over serving individuals or social hosts serving alcohol as the only food or beverage at an in home party. Completing the assessment of contributing factors entailed generating new primary data, and members were trained in how to do observations, key informant interviews, and focus groups. In addition, members learned how to data mine existing
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sources. Gathering the data not only helped the coalition establish some baseline measures for future outcomes (evaluation), it also helped each member develop capacity for looking at problems, gathering information, and deeply understanding alcoholrelated problems in the South County community. Coalition meetings following the data collection exercises then focused on step three of the SPF process: Planning. Mr. Sparks and the CCAT team analyzed the data they collected and then triangulated a list of specific problems evidenced by the data. Again, the coalition members were encouraged to move past speculations about problems and instead to focus on problems identified through the data. Many of the coalition members were surprised to learn about the specific attitudes, behaviors, and settings contribute to alcohol-related problems in their community. Some members immediately wanted to jump on addressing contributing factors such as sales to minors or illegal in home parties. However, Mr. Sparks again led the group in a training of how to develop problem statements and prioritize problems. Using elements of the Free To Grow Building Leadership for Community Development curriculum, he encouraged the group to think critically about the problems they identified and determine if problems were widely felt by others, deeply cared about by others, and possible to address with the selected communitys assets. At the following coalition meeting, Mr. Sparks moved the coalition members from their new list of prioritized problems towards selecting strategies for addressing the problems. Again, he worked to develop the coalitions capacity for understanding proven environmental strategies and for determining which strategies would generate desired outcomes through offering another mini-training. Mr. Sparks shared a list of prevention approaches used in the tobacco arena or tested by other counties newly
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implementing environmental strategies for alcohol-related problem prevention. Sample strategies include: regulating retail outlet density or the number of alcohol-retailers in a set community, enacting local policies such as required beverage service training for all alcohol servers in bars and restaurants, or community campaigns such as Parent Pledge which encourages parents to pledge to only host alcohol-free teen parties. After overviewing a menu of strategy options, he asked the group the following set of questions from the Free to Grow curriculum (2000): Can you really implement the proposed strategy? Have you chosen the correct individual organization to help you address your issue? Do the strategies give power to the group working on the issue? Do the strategies also further your organizational goals? Are the strategies within the experience of the group? Is the group comfortable with them? Are your group leaders experienced enough to carry out the strategies? Will people enjoy working or participating in this strategy? Will the strategies play positively in the media? Will they work? (Levine et al, 2000)
Successive meetings focused on matching problems and strategies and formalizing a plan for implementation. Finally, Mr. Sparks helped build the local movements to deal with other powerful actors by helping the coalition begin action. The coalition has a clear view of problems and proven strategies to begin to unravel the power of the alcohol industry. In South Sonoma County the alcohol industry is represented by local alcohol retailers, social hosts serving alcohol at parties and events, and other powerful community norms around drinking. The coalition members call on their circles of influence to move forward their goal of reducing binge drinking and alcohol-related problems.
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Hypothesis 2: Successful social entrepreneurship involves innovations that mobilize existing assets of marginalized groups to improve lives While conducting their analysis of the seven successful Social Entrepreneurial projects, Alvord et al found that each project engaged the members of the group affected by the social problem, building on the strengths and resources of the marginalized or impacted groups to improve their own lives. Many projects accomplished helping clients use their own strengths to a varied degree, and Alvord et al developed a rating system for this element of social entrepreneurship success. A high rating reflects primary reliance on the assets and capacities of local actors for self-help, a medium rating is earned by projects with an emphasis on self-help combined with continuing outside resources, and a low score is determined by a reliance on outside resources and services. (Alvord et al, 2002) Sonoma Countys project mobilizes the community members affected by alcohol and drug related problems, encouraging community members to use their circles of influence and institutional resources to make change. Coalition members include a range of community members representing different community sectors and/or organizations such law enforcement, neighborhood residents, and parents. Membership in the coalition helps each representative move from being a victim of the problem, to collectively becoming a force to combat the problem. The Police Chief can lead his colleagues in moving away from scrambling for more resources to make an increasing number of arrests for drunk driving violations, and work through the coalition to pass a policy to enforce Responsible Beverage Service trainings for all servers at local bars and restaurants. The neighborhood resident leader can empower her neighbors to look forward to making fewer calls protesting the loud, disorderly, underage parties
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occurring in her neighborhood. Instead she can lead her neighbors in helping the coalition to pass a local Social Host Ordinance, which holds home owners responsible for the costs of emergency personnel and law enforcement responding to disrupt the parties. The parent who didnt like confronting individual parents about keeping their teen parties alcohol and drug-free can now work with the coalition to implement a Parent Pledge campaign that establishes a list of parents that pledge to only host alcohol and drug-free parties. Like the leaders of the seven successful social entrepreneurship initiatives described by Alvord et al, Michael treats the assets and capacities of the [marginalized] groups themselves as vital to the initiative, thereby creating the necessity for sharing control and mobilizing the resources with local partners without whose willing cooperation the initiative will fail while increasing the likelihood of sustainable change because of its grounding in local commitment and capacities. (Alvord et al, 2002) Alvord et al may give Sonoma County a medium rating as the emphasis on selfhelp is supported by county grants, staff support, and government funded technical assistance. However, this support is offered only in the beginning stages of the coalitions work as the coalitions will eventually enact policies and change social norms that will create long lasting, sustainable change.
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Hypothesis 3: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives emphasize learning by individuals and by the organization, if they operate on a large scale Alvord et al found that the seven initiatives they studied emphasized knowledge building in both individuals and organizations. They developed a scale for rating a social entrepreneurship projects ability to build knowledge in individuals and/or organizations: a high rating is given for systematic investment in individual or organization learning, a medium score is awarded for investment in individual or organizational learning, and a low score is reserved for those projects that have little investment in systemic learning. (Alvord et al, 2002) While all of the initiatives described by Alvord et al encourage staff and client learning and development, scarce resources limit most from impacting organizational learning. Only those social entrepreneurship initiatives that operate on a large scale were able to use their resources to impact organizational learning. (Alvord et al, 2002) During an interview about Social Entrepreneurship in Sonoma County, Mr. Sparks called himself a content expert and claimed that his agency, the Center for Community Action and Training, has the express mission of building community capacity. He went on to describe capacity building as teaching community members, nonprofits, and government staff how to identify and unravel alcohol and other drug problems as well as how to match problems and prevention strategies to generate lasting change. While he expressed a desire to build capacity in one community and then move on to help coalitions in other communities, he confessed that building capacity in coalitions as difficult, long-term work. First he must help individuals break out of their traditional thought patterns and embrace a new approach.
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Still, if Mr. Sparks expects the newly educated individuals to garner support for action, he finds that he must also work to educate the organizations each coalition member represents. Mr. Sparks exclaimed hed rather sleep with the devil than make another series of phone calls to one coalition member whose organization is still trying to divert the coalitions focus to helping individuals make better choices rather than changing environments. Mr. Sparks finds capacity building efforts have to move beyond changing individuals to changing organizations in order to achieve community-wide change. (Personal communication4, 2007) While Mr. Sparks has his work cut out for him dealing with trying to win the support of organizations at the community level, the County of Sonoma also wields significant influence on community agencies. For example, project staff leader Ellen Bauer used her position on the County of Sonoma Strategic Planning team to educate leaders of the countys multi-million dollar budget and 4000 person staff. Many Sonoma County agencies are impacted by alcohol or other drug-related problems including the Sheriff, Child Protective Services, Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Services. Ms. Bauer recognized that funding is generally allocated to jails first, healthcare, treatment, and then prevention last. She used her position on the Strategic Planning committee to help convince leaders to consider a larger investment in prevention through community based coalitions. In this way, the Sonoma County social entrepreneurship initiative may succeed in achieving impacting organizational change. (Personal communication5), 2007 Sonoma County is implementing activities that may one day warrant a high rating from Alvord et al for promoting both learning in individuals and institutions.
4 5
Personal Communication with Michael Sparks on March 30, 2007. See transcripts in Appendix D. Personal Communication with Ellen Bauer on April 2, 2007. See transcripts in Appendix E.
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Characteristics of Leadership Hypothesis 4: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives are often founded by leaders with capacity to work with and build bridges among very diverse stakeholders Alvord et al found that core characteristics of leadership were universal across the seven initiatives they studied. Specifically, leaders displayed the ability to work effectively across many diverse constituencies. (Alvord et al) Mr. Sparks, as the leader of the Sonoma County Social Entrepreneurship effort, displays the ability to work effectively across many diverse constituencies through his ability to form coalitions and engage coalition members in working with other community members to enact community wide changes. Mr. Sparks moves with ease between working with law enforcement officials, city council members, merchants, parents, and many other varied and often divergent groups. However, adhering to his dedication to build expertise in local communities, he works to pass along his relationship building skills and the resulting relationships to local leaders. Working with and through local coalition leaders, he finds ways to engage a very broad range of people by focusing on the communitys shared negative impact of alcohol-related problems. He additionally finds key terms and concepts that speak to the issue in a way that is unique to each constituent. For example, Mr. Sparks wins law enforcement support by focusing on the message that limiting alcohol availability could reduce police calls to service and free up time for officers to deal with more pressing problems. Mr. Sparks effectively brings people together and bridges relationships between diverse members by linking them around a common issue.
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Hypothesis 5: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives have leadership that is characterized by: Long-term commitment to the initiative; and Capacity to catalyze adaptation to emerging contextual challenges Alvord et al identified an additional core characteristics of leadership as the ability to apply adaptive skills that enabled them to recognize and respond to changing contextual demands over a long term. (Alvord et al, 2002) This characteristic is broken down into two parts: long-term commitment to the initiative and capacity to catalyze adaptation to emerging contextual challenges. (Alvord et al, 2002) Commitment to the initiative is broken down into two elements. One element involves creating a vision for organizational growth in the long-term. The second element involves creating succession planning to ensure strong leaders continue to carry the initiative forward beyond a founding leaders vision. Alvord et al developed another scale for measuring long term adaptive capacity giving a high score for projects that planned for external or internal organizational change in the long-term or who created succession plans, a moderate score when initiatives only adapted to internal or external changes slowly, and a low score when trying to adapt undermined an initiatives effectiveness. (Alvord et al, 2002) Capacity to adapt through challenges is a second aspect of the core leadership characteristic. Alvord et al observed that each of the seven case study projects were led by long-term leaders (five of seven had founding leaders with a 25-year or longer term). These leaders needed to direct initiatives through political changes, new partnerships with donors and funders, and other contextual challenges. (Alvord et al, 2002) Mr. Sparks displays both long-term commitment to the initiative and capacity to
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catalyze adaptation to emerging contextual challenges. Mr. Sparks long-term commitment to drug and alcohol-related problem reduction is unmatched in our community, and is a nationwide rarity in the prevention field. His nonprofit agency, the Center for Community Action and Training, serves as his means of developing a succession of communities and leaders who can keep fueling the alcohol and other drug prevention movement. Although Mr. Sparks works to build capacity in leaders in dozens of communities, his years of research and experience uniquely qualify him to, as Alvord et al says, catalyze adaptation to emerging contextual challenges. At the community level, coalitions are constantly plagued by contextual challenges or challenges that shift the landscape of the initiative. Coalitions have the tenuous charge of mobilizing the larger community to make change. This change often occurs through the coalition working to implement a policy and then educating the community about adhering to the policy. Implementing a policy and educating the community about the need to follow the policy can both be long, arduous processes with many road blocks and challenges. While there may be packaged strategies to implementing something like a Social Host Ordinance, a coalition can only borrow language and general guidelines from another community. Nuances such as how to deal with an angry landlord association who doesnt want to be accountable for the actions of rowdy college renters, are more difficult for coalitions to manage or predict. In contrast, Mr. Sparks can draw from his prior experience to advise coalitions in how to take action when challenges arise. Contextual challenges also arise at the national level. Alcohol producers recognizing prevention initiatives potential to negatively impact alcohol revenues, constantly work to challenge prevention efforts. For example, alcohol giants spend
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thousands of dollars on local community festivals and fairs, providing these otherwise under-funded events with much needed revenues in exchange for sponsorship recognition. Suddenly, local cultural events such as Cinco de Mayo, move away from becoming focused on celebrating Mexican culture, and instead become recognized for Latinos Say Hands Off our Holiday! sponsorship by Corona beer. An insidious message is sent that everyone drinks beer on this holiday, furthering existing problematic community norms that support risky alcohol consumption. While Mr. Sparks may have the skills to lead a take back the
Photo and caption from http://www.marininstitute.org/take_action/han ds-off.htm
holiday campaign, he and his colleagues have much work to do to
spread these skills across the nation.
Organizational and Institutional Features Hypothesis 6a: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives may expand their operations by: Organizational growth to expand the coverage of their programs Small organization in alliance with clients; and Small organization that offers technical assistance to larger organizations Alvord, Brown, and Letts found that initiatives varied dramatically in the formation of their operational organizations. Even when the projects are divided into the three innovation areas identified in Hypothesis One (build capacity, share package or build movement), projects varied in organizational size, organizational system types,
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focus on staff development, and performance evaluation. However, in looking across the projects, Alvord et al hypothesized that while each initiative has a varied organizational type, the organizations all achieved expansion goals through one of three approaches. These approaches include: 1.) growing the organization to expand coverage of programs; 2.) leveraging expansion through alliances with clients; and 3.) leveraging organizational goals through empowering larger organizations with technical assistance. Sonoma County utilizes the later two tactics outlined above. The Sonoma County Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Program recognizes public health concerns must move beyond the desks of County personnel, and seeks to engage the community in addressing its own health issues through sponsoring coalitions. In this way, the County is expanding its own prevention division through building alliances with community members affected by alcohol and other drug-related problems. The coalitions, or small groups dedicated problem reduction, seek to develop partnerships and alliances within their own communities to garner support from fellow residents and policy makers also seeking to improve community health. The County of Sonomas Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Program empowers the coalitions through offering technical assistance and trainings to members. Using a packaged dissemination approach to teaching people how to engage in a substance abuse free movement, staff and consultants help coalition members gain the skills they need to target problems. For example, County consultants lead trainings on developing a Social Host Ordinance. Once the coalition members become expert in implementing strategies, the coalition members then offer their own technical assistance to other larger organizations. For example, the coalition worked with local City Council members to
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create language for a Social Host Ordinance. The coalition members were able to link City Council members to legal advice, sample ordinances, and data to support the need for the ordinance. Another example of technical assistance offered by the coalitions includes helping the City Planning Department create an ordinance and fee program to ensure that all alcohol retailers offer staff Responsible Beverage Training or Responsible Sales Training. In addition, the coalition members worked with local police departments to create better tracking measures for alcohol-related incidents so the police department can now apply for grants for more enforcement.
Hypothesis 6b: Successful social entrepreneurship initiatives that expand their impacts by organizational growth must invest in management, staff development, and monitoring evaluation systems.
In addition to finding that organizational expansion is supported by the three approaches outlined in Hypothesis 6a, Alvord et al proposed the hypothesis that expanding impacts through organizational growth first requires an investment in management, staff development, and monitoring evaluation systems. Sonoma County acknowledges that it must make a significant long-term investment in these areas in order to achieve successful outcomes. Support is offered throughout the many levels of the prevention initiative (Federal to State to County to local nonprofits) to those in management roles. The State of California provides annual trainings and financial support that counties use to support management skill development. The County of Sonoma additionally offers all personnel an annual training budget ranging from $1,000- $2,000 each year, which staff can use to fund university level training, trade trainings, or county offered trainings. Sonoma
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County project managers are given ample resources to improve management, and managers are paid well to help ensure longevity. The County staff in the alcohol and other drug prevention unit, in turn, offers management support to the coalition leaders. County staff hire consultants, secure free trainings through the State, and develop their own trainings to support individuals and agencies overseeing coalitions. Additional staff or client development services are also a core focus for the County. The County uses Mr. Sparks and the Center for Community Action and Training to ensure all paid coordinators and other volunteer members of the coalitions are continually engaged in mini-trainings. As described earlier in this paper, past trainings include: Environmental Prevention Overview, Data Collection, Prioritizing Problems, Creating Problem Statements, Selecting Strategies, and Strategy Implementation. Both management support and staff development activities must occur frequently and on an annual basis. Training material must be updated and offered often to help prevent knowledge gaps due to staff turn over, the development of new best practices, or staff burn out. The County of Sonoma is also very focused on monitoring and evaluating project outcomes. The Federal Government and the State of California both require the County to provide monitoring reports that include project evaluations. In addition, the County is committed to impacting specific alcohol and other drug-related problem areas and must evaluate activities to ensure outcomes are achieved. The County established data indicators and baseline data through its Strategic Prevention Framework Step 1: Assessment document, and is working with coalitions to select and measure specific outcomes. The State of California developed the California Outcome Measures on-line
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data management tool to help counties and coalitions track and evaluate progress. The County uses this full featured system to track all coalition meetings and activities, which builds a living case study that can later be utilized for analyzing factors of successful coalitions. The California Outcome Measure system is built on the Anti-Tobacco Initiatives On-line Tobacco Information System, which is largely credited with helping the Anti-Tobacco movement establish, track, and measure outcomes. (Personal Communication6, 2006)
Hypothesis 7: External relations of social entrepreneurship initiatives vary across innovation forms: Capacity building emphasizes attention to local constituents and resource providers; Package dissemination emphasizes attention to package users and disseminators; and Movement building emphasizes attention to members, allies, and target actors The authors of Social Enterprise and Social Transformation found a link between the external relationship focuses and the innovation focus of the seven case study initiatives. Each innovation took a different approach. Those initiatives with the capacity building innovation focused external relations on local constituents and resources providers. When the innovation utilized packaged dissemination, the external relations accordingly revolved around package users and disseminators. Movement building initiatives required external relations with members, allies, and target actors. The seven case study initiatives success largely depended on their successful engagement of their external relations. For example, Alvord et al suggests that the
Personal Communication on February 27, 2006 with Kerry Andrade, Health Information Specialist with 17 years of Tobacco prevention experience.
6
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Greenbelt Movement, a capacity building initiative, compromised its growth and sustainability by only focusing on influencing policy makers instead of also winning the support of resource providers. Sonoma County struggles with prioritizing external relationships as it has attempted to use all three innovation types since the projects beginning. As such, the initiative leaders must try to simultaneously build external relations with local constituents and resource providers who also serve as the package users and disseminators, as well as building alliances with other partners or target actors. Mr. Sparks, leading the test project in South Sonoma County, demonstrated that building relationships with local constituents and resource providers, in other words with the identified coalition members and their circles of influence, is a lengthy process that requires continued efforts. In order to ensure continued membership, these coalition members needed to be frequently reminded of their important role as coalition members and deeply engaged in coalition activities. If the members are committed, they then become package disseminators and go on to help their respective agencies or constituent groups participate in problem reduction strategies such as policy development. However, these policies wont be developed unless coalition leaders and County staff nurture relationships with policy makers such as City Council Members or City Planning staff in order to gain the necessary political influence and economic resources to carry out strategies. These relationships can also be difficult to develop and maintain. For example, a Police Chief attended several planning meetings and originally aligned himself with the coalitions goal to reduce alcohol-related problems through increasing
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enforcement around underage drinking parties. However, his participation quickly dissipated, and he later reneged his support for a Social Host Ordinance. The coalition leader attributed the Police Chiefs sudden lack of support to the coalition leaders inability to simultaneously court relationships with such a large number of diverse coalition members. (Personal Communication7, 2007)
How the venture expands and sustains its impacts to transform a larger system. Hypothesis 8: Scaling up strategies vary across forms of social entrepreneurship: Capacity building initiatives build on local concerns and assets to increase capacities for group self-help, and then scale up coverage for a wider range of clients; Package dissemination initiatives scale up coverage with service easily delivered to individuals or small groups by low-skill staff or affiliates; and Movement building initiatives expand and indirectly impact campaigns and alliances to influence activities of targets or allies.
Alvord, Brown, and Letts cite the work of Uvin (1995) and Uvin, Jain and Brown (2000) as establishing three major patterns for increasing impacts of SE initiatives: (1) expanding services to provide services and benefits to more people (2) expanding functions and services to provide broader impacts to primary stakeholders, and (3) activities that change the behavior of other actors with wide impacts and so indirectly scaling up impacts Linking the selection of strategies to the three innovations of capacity development, packaged dissemination, and building a movement, Alvord et al finds the following three hypothesizes as offered above: 1.) Capacity building initiatives build on local concerns and assets to increase capacities for group self-help, and then scale up coverage for a wider range of clients; 2.) Package dissemination initiatives scale up coverage with
7
Personal Communication with Michael Sparks on March 30, 2007. See transcripts in Appendix D.
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service easily delivered to individuals or small groups by low-skill staff or affiliates; and 3.) Movement building initiatives expand and indirectly impact campaigns and alliances to influence activities of targets or allies. While Alvord et al found a pattern of approaches for successfully widening impacts on social problems, a range of impacts are achieved by each organization depending on their ability to execute scaling up strategies. The County of Sonomas Department of Health Services intends to scale up social impacts across all three innovation types. Beginning with the coalition members and the capacity building innovation, the County and Mr. Sparks work with coalition members to clarify their concerns and build on their assets. Engaging coalition members in the data collection and problem identification activities of the Strategic Prevention Framework helps members move from loose personal statements such as I think too many parents let their kids drink to specific problem statements such as Social hosting is contributing to high rates of underage drinking. This is evidenced by the number of police calls to break up parties, frequent focus group statements, and the California Healthy Kids survey. Next, engaging coalition members in implementing strategies requires members to use their assets or circles of influence to make specific changes. For example, the parent coalition member may help begin a Parent Pledge campaign, engaging fellow parents in the campaign to prevent underage substance use. In another example, the Police Chief on the coalition begins to track the number of calls to service and corresponding costs to break up house parties. He then presents this data to the City Council as a first step in encouraging the development of a Social Host Ordinance. Once coalition members are well versed on the problem and trained in strategy implementation, they can move on to continue to disseminate the package of strategies to
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other groups and effectively scale up impacts by engaging other groups. The coalition members are volunteers and could be called low-skilled. Mr. Sparks, the high-skilled prevention expert, teaches coalition members the basics of environmental prevention and empowers them to continue the work once the training is complete. The empowered members are trained to use facts, speaking points, training materials, and other resources to provide technical support to community agencies needing expert support as described in Hypothesis 6a. Finally, coalition members are encouraged to help use their local efforts to expand the impact of a nationwide campaign to target the powerful actors in the substance abuse arena such as the alcohol industry. For example, the South County coalitions data collection process identified alcohol retail outlets as a contributing factor to underage drinking. Specifically, the liqueur stores and other outlets had several features that made alcohol attractive and or accessible to youth. For example, alcohol advertisements plastered windows and prevented merchants from witnessing youth tapping strangers on the shoulder outside the store to solicit them for purchases. Inside the store, posters featuring young people engaging in drinking covered most wall space. Cheap malt beverages and alcopops, sweet, fruity, soda-like alcohol drinks, lined the wall behind a large snack display. These alcoholic beverages were not only placed by items often purchased by youth such as candy bars and chips, the alcohol was also not visible to the store merchant who could not see young people shop lifting. Youth in focus groups report frequently drinking Mikes Hard Lemonade, Boones Strawberry Hill and other alcopops, and reported little or no trouble in accessing the products.
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The South Sonoma County coalition then used this data to support a larger statewide effort to change the tax requirements for alcopops. With support from local coalitions like South Sonoma County, state advocates were able to prove that these drinks target teens with their cheap price, widespread availability, fruity flavors, and soda-like labels. On August 14th, 2007, the California State Board of Equalization passed a ruling that reclassified alcopops as a distilled spirit moving their tax rate from $.20 per gallon to $3.30 per gallon. (Marin Institute, 2007) Research shows that alcohol consumption is directly linked to pricing, and advocates believe this will reduce the amount of alcopops consumed by youth. This is an enlightened step forward in controlling underage consumption of alcohol, said Bruce Lee Livingston, executive director of Marin Institute. For years, Big Alcohol has evaded proper taxation on these products. Now, both the state and our youth will benefit. (Marin Institute, 2007)
Hypothesis 9: Social transformation leverage and impacts vary across forms of social entrepreneurship: Capacity building initiatives that alter local norms, roles, and expectations can transform the cultural contexts in which marginalized groups live; Package distribution initiatives that provide tools and resources to enhance individual productivity can transform their economic circumstances; and Movement building initiatives that increase the voice of marginalized groups can transforms their political contexts and their ability to influence decisions
Social impact or problem transformation is the goal of all social entrepreneurship initiatives, however, the type of innovation used at the core of the initiative determines the type of impact on economics, politics, or other cultural transformation. For example, capacity building initiatives impacted cultural contexts, packaged distribution initiatives
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have thus far impacted economic circumstances, and movement building initiatives have transformed political contexts. Sonoma County again seeks to make changes on cultural, economic, and political levels by implementing all three innovation types. Building capacity of the coalition members who in turn build awareness in community members, is designed to alter local attitudes, beliefs, and settings where alcohol or other drugs are used. For example, the South Sonoma County coalition is working to change the attitude of adult tolerance of youth drinking, the belief that drinking is a right of passage for youth, and remove alcohol from social settings such as youth parties. These changes could transform the cultural contexts of South Sonoma County, moving from a negative environment for adolescents to a healthier environment for youth development. Disseminating the package of environmental strategies including policy implementation such as Social Host Ordinances or community campaigns such as the Parent Pledge, may transform local economics. Cost associated with law enforcement, emergency room services, vandalism, litter, and other alcohol or other drug-related problems will decrease. Communities will be able to put valuable resources towards other important causes. In addition, alcohol retailers may be impacted economically. Sales may decrease when minors are no longer paying for alcohol purchases through shoulder tapping or illegal sales, or they may increase if steps are taken to prevent youth theft. Retail ordinances requiring annual fees for compliance and Responsible Beverage Service trainings may also economically impact merchants. Finally, the coalition model helps local citizens impacted by alcohol and other drugs to have a political voice and an ability to influence policies that impact their
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communities. With the help of the State Alcohol and Drug Prevention Department, local coalitions are united across California and efforts can be leveraged to impact statewide policy as well. As California builds its success on the alcohol or other drug prevention front, as it did with the Anti-Tobacco Movement, other states begin to replicate Californias efforts. In this way, local grass root efforts like those in Sonoma County move a national prevention agenda and transform political contexts by giving community members their own voice.
Case Study Conclusion

Although it is difficult to compare Alvord et als twenty-five year initiatives to Sonoma Countys new social entrepreneurship initiative, the Sonoma County project incorporates Alvord et als identified factors for successful social entrepreneurship. While it will be more accurate to rate this project against identified successful social entrepreneurship projects several years down the line, Sonoma County is showing early signs of reducing alcohol and other drug-related problems. For example, the South County test coalition successfully passed a fee ordinance requiring restaurants and bars to pay an annual fee for sales law enforcement and staff Responsible Beverage Service training. Early data shows problems previously reported in these settings are decreasing. In addition, the Sonoma County initiative has several resources and assets that are likely to contribute to its future success. Specifically, federal and state funds directed to Sonoma County are now deployed to five additional local coalitions. In addition, the County of Sonoma is funding a consulting contract with Mr. Sparks Center for Community Action and Training to provide training and technical assistance to the
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coalitions. These coalitions will use government dollars to build capacity of coalition members. In turn, the coalition members are encouraged to use their assets and circles of influence to garner further financial and other resource support for packaged environmental prevention strategies such as policy development. The coalitions will engage local community groups, coalitions in other regions, and partner with California State leaders to advance the substance-free community movement. The County is excited to fund activities that result in policies, norm changes and changed ideals as problems and costs associated with these problems dissipate in the revised community landscape. In summary, each coalition works towards its goal of reducing alcohol and other drug related problems through innovations that ultimately impact cultural, economic, and political contexts that transform the social problem of alcohol and other drug abuse and fundamentally change social systems to improve community health.
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Conclusion
Todays Social Entrepreneurs are revolutionizing social change efforts through innovative approaches incorporating entrepreneurial and other business principles. With vision, resourcefulness, and persistence, Social Entrepreneurs are measurably transforming social problems and propelling sustainable social change. For example, Mr. Mr. Muhammad Yunus began the microfinance movement which is helping to eradicate poverty around the globe and Mr. Sparks is leading Sonoma County and California in reducing alcohol and other drug-related problems. Social Entrepreneurs offer innovative solutions to social problems that generate funding or other resources to sustain its efforts and ultimately transform social systems. Successful social entrepreneurship innovations engage marginalized or impacted groups through one of three approaches: building capacity, disseminating packages, or creating movements. These initiatives engage impacted groups in fundamentally changing economic, political, and cultural contexts and transforming social problems. Most
excitingly, these initiatives can be blue printed or replicated across communities stretching the globe. For example, the microfinance movement began in Bangladesh and is now empowering impoverished women in many countries to eliminate poverty for their families and villages. Sonoma Countys coalitions demonstrate another example of community members using their assets and resources to address community health problems, and the packaged strategies these coalitions use can be replicated to reduce alcohol and other drug-related problems in other communities as well.
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Social Entrepreneurs have tremendous potential for revolutionizing social change efforts, and governments and nonprofits across the globe can achieve greater impact on social problems by aligning with these change leaders. Embracing social entrepreneurship will entail disrupting current innovations, building in longer-term funding for activities such as capacity building, developing strengthened outcome measures, and other efforts. Each of these activities will take significant time and resources. Nonprofits may be reluctant to change their current approach to social problems. Government officials in Sonoma County found encouraging the environmental prevention approach, a new innovation for local nonprofits, a long and arduous process. Only after several years of trainings, and then an expensive year-long effort to conduct a community planning process could the Sonoma County Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Program redirect funding towards this new innovation. Still, even with redirected funding, Mr. Sparks points out that special efforts are needed to ensure Sonoma County nonprofits implement the new innovations rather than reverting to old approaches. Successful initiatives need significant upfront resources to build capacity, disseminate packages, and build a movement. For example, Sonoma County has developed a contract with the Center for Community Action and Training to provide technical assistance and training to its local initiative leaders. Government and other funders will also need to look at these resource allocations to support these activities in a longer time frame than usually allowed for grants. For example, Sonoma County generally offered funding for three year initiatives. Sonoma County now works from a ten year strategic plan, allowing more time for the coalition approach to develop.
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Strengthening outcome measures will additionally assure funders of success. Outcome measures help funders determine which projects warrant funding. Ultimately this will divert funding away from older ineffective innovations and allow more opportunity for funding successful approaches such as those implemented by social entrepreneurs. Additional efforts can be designed to help social entrepreneurs come to the table. Governments and nonprofits can search for internal candidates who with support and training can become social entrepreneurs. Governments and nonprofits can also hire experts such as Mr. Sparks who may not use the title, but display the characteristics of a social entrepreneur. In short, governments and nonprofits dedicated to social change must make way for these innovative new leaders and their business strategies. Social entrepreneurs are revolutionizing social change efforts, and offer hope for one day reducing the worlds most entrenched social problems.
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Bibliography
Ashoka Innovators for the Public. (2006) What is a Social Entrepreneur? [Web Page] Author Unkown. Retrieved on January 3, 3006 from: http://www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur Alvord, Sarah H., Brown, L. David David and Letts, Christine W. (2002) Social Entrepreneurship and Social Transformation: An Exploratory Study. Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations. Working Paper No. 15. Retrieved on May 3, 2007 from http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/case/leaders/resources.htm Bornstein, David (2004) How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (pp 1-3, 40-46) New York: Oxford University Press. Brinkckerhoff, Peter (2000) Social Entrepreneurship: The Art of Mission-Based Venture Development (p 12) New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Christensen, Clayton, Heiner Baumann, Rudy Ruggles, and Thomas Sadtler (2006) Disruptive Innovation for Social Change. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved on April 1, 2007 from EBSCOhost database. Dahle, Cheryl (2006) Filling the Void. Fast Company, 102. Retrieved on October 15, 2006 from www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102 Dees, Gregory, Jed Emerson, and Peter Economy (2001) Enterprising Nonprofits: A Toolkit for Social Entrepreneurs (pp 1-2, 4, 6) New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Dees, Gregory J. (1998) The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. Retrieved on September 29, 2006 from http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/case/ Drayton, Bill (2006) Everyone a Change Maker: Social Entrepreneurships Ultimate Goal. Innovations, MIT Press. Retrieved on September 29, 2006 from http://www.ashoka.org/files/innovations8.5x11FINAL_0.pdf Economist Staff Writer (2006) Business of Giving. Economist, 378 (8466). Retrieved on December 19, 2006, from RDS Business and Industry database. Economist Staff Writer (2006) Birth of Philanthrocapitalism. Economist, 378 (8466). Retrieved on December 19, 2006, from RDS Business and Industry database.
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Innovative Investor International Staff Writer (2004) Adventures in Philanthropy: put off by traditional philanthropy, Wall Streeters and entrepreneurs are setting up businesslike charities that pursue social returns as aggressively as their firms do profits. Institutional Investor International, 29 (12). Retrieved on December 19, 2006, from RDS Business and Industry database. Letts, Christine W., Ryan, William, Grossman, Allen (1997) Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists. Harvard Business Review, 75 (2). Retrieved on April 14, 2007 from http://www.socialedge.org/resources/edgewiki/VirtuousCapital Levine, Lori, Michael Sparks, and Paul Speer (2000) Building Leadership for Community Development: A Training and Curriculum to Support Free to Grow Program Implementation. Joseph L Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. Retrieved on October 1, 2007 from http://freetogrow.org/pubs_keywords3362/pubs_keywords_list_more.htm@cat_id =13&attrib_id=5566&strg_id=281792 Marin Institute (2007) California State Board of Equalization Makes Historic Decision: Alcopops To Be Taxed As Distilled Spirits. [Web Page] Author Unknown. Retrieved on October 30, 2007 from http://www.marininstitute.org/alcopops/BOE_Rally.htm Martin, Roger L. and Sally Osberg (2007) Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/social_entrepreneurship_the_case_for_def inition/ Rangan, V. Kasturi (2004) Lofty Missions, Down-to-Earth Plans. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved on April 14, 2007 from EBSCOhost database. Runyan, Curtis (1999) Action on the Front Lines. World Watch. Retrieved on April 1, 2007 from http://www.worldwatch.org/node/478 Stern Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. (2006) What is Social Entrepreneurship at Stern? [Web Page] Author Unknown. Retrieved on January 3, 3006 from http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/berkley/social.cfm?doc_id=1868 Szabo, Liz (2005) California Says its Long Anti-Tobacco Campaign Has Paid Off. USA Today. Retrieved on November 2, 2007 from http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-01-25-smoking-_x.htm Whitaker, Dana (2007) Transforming Lives $40 at a Time (pp xxii - xxiii). California: Opening Eyes.
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Wikepedia (2007) The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) Program. [Web Page] Author Unknown. Retrieved on November 2, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education Zak, Tim (Host). (2005, September 7) Social Innovation Conversations: Globe Shakers with David Bornstein. [Radio Broadcast] California: Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Social Innovation. Retrieved on April 1, 2007 from: http://www.siconversations.org/shows/detail701.html
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Appendix
A. Planning for Community-Based Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug-Related Problems in Sonoma County Step 1: Assessment B. Sonoma County Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Framework: Strategic Plan for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention 2007-2010. C. Strategic Prevention Framework Project Management Report and MS Project Chart D. Interview: Mr. Michael Sparks E. Interview: Ms. Barbara Graves F. Interview: Ms. Ellen Bauer

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SOCIAL ENTREPRENUERSHIP: REVOLUTIONIZING SOCIAL CHANGE EFFORTS BY IMPLEMENTING BUSINESS STRATEGIES

Master of Business Administration Holly Joy White-Wolfe

________________________________________ John Dopp, Professor, Management

________________________________________ Michael Meeks, Assistant Professor, Management

Public Health Triangle

Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration Strategic Prevention 30 Framework

SOCIAL ENTREPRENUERSHIP: REVOLUTIONIZING SOCIAL CHANGE EFFORTS BY IMPLEMENTING BUSINESS STRATEGIES

Defining Social Entrepreneurship

Social Entrepreneurs Emerge to Revolutionize Social Change Efforts

The Emergence of Social Entrepreneurs

Examples of Revolutionary Change Efforts

Case Study Selection

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP Social Problem Overview:

Social Entrepreneur Emerges

2. Capacity: Mobilize and/or build capacity to address identified needs.

3. Planning: Develop a comprehensive strategic plan.

4. Implementation: Implement evidence based programs and infrastructure support.

Case Study Analysis

holiday campaign, he and his colleagues have much work to do to

spread these skills across the nation.

Case Study Conclusion

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