Babson College

FROM DAY ONE THROUGH GRADUATION AND BEYOND
Changemaker Campus since Fall 2009

Babson defines social entrepreneurship as the process of identifying opportunities, organizing resources, and providing leadership to solve “people and planet” problems while generating societal and economic value. Using its expertise in entrepreneurship, Babson leverages “people and planet” programming to educate mission-driven entrepreneurs to build and grow businesses for a better world. As a Changemaker Campus, Babson has expanded its work to integrate people, planet, and profit issues into its curricular and co-curricular activities. Babson as a whole seeks to serve as an educator, accelerator and communicator of the positive impacts of social entrepreneurship.

Babson’s signature first-year orientation – From Day One: Making A Difference – provides a marketplace of social entrepreneurship activity, involvement, and information for the purpose of orienting incoming classes, both undergraduate and graduate students, to the notion of social change through entrepreneurship. While it is impressive to instill an expectation of social impact for every incoming student, Babson set its sights on an even more expansive impact.
“It was clear after Babson’s first year as a Changemaker Campus that we wanted to extend our commitment and amplify our investment to add value to our graduating social entrepreneurs,” says Cheryl Kiser, Managing Director of the Lewis Institute and Social Innovation Lab, as well as change leader for the Babson Changemaker Campus team. “We decided to extend From Day One: Making A Difference to our graduating students who were embarking on social ventures.”

Spotlight on the Social Entrepreneurs Action Learning Project
Ashoka U 2011 Innovation Award Winner

Thus, the Social Entrepreneurs Action Learning Project was born. The Project is a year-long initiative for Babson alumni in their first year following graduation that provides access to individual coaching and a peer community to support a successful social entrepreneur career launch. The purpose of the project is not only to help orient and support aspiring social entrepreneurs, but most importantly, as Cheryl asserts, “to identify the key challenges and lessons learned by aspiring social entrepreneurs to allow us to build better content for teaching future social entrepreneurs while they are still at Babson.” By working directly with recent Babson grads in social entrepreneurial ventures, Babson is able to take the most insightful feedback and real-life lessons and cycle them directly back into the teaching and learning processes of faculty, staff, students and other Changemaker Campuses, thereby helping to close the quality improvement loop for curricular and co-curricular learning.

Babson on Program Funding and Sharing Best Practices with the Field

“We have succeeded in building enormous enthusiasm from funders who value this kind of signature learning event, for Babson as well as its alumni and the broader Changemaker Campus community. We are eager to share all of our blueprints with other colleges and universities who may wish to replicate this program. The Social Entrepreneurs Action Learning Project has served as a powerful development strategy, because, in Babson’s case, each of the alumni participants has agreed to ‘pay it forward’ and stay on for an additional year to help coach the next group of Babson Social Entrepreneurs in our program. Our alumni have shown tremendous enthusiasm to develop teaching cases and support this network for learning on social entrepreneurship.”