Social Enterprise and Organizational Learning

By the mid-1990s, many of the youth organizations who had survived beyond five years of existence began to recognize the hazards of being donor-dependent. Funders relish innovation, and both grants and foundation resources go far more easily to short-term projects or start-up ideas than to base support. Paying the rent, repairing the furnace, opening a graphic arts laboratory, and acquiring new musical equipment have little appeal to donors or funders, and youth organizations are left to fend for themselves to meet these needs.

Arts organizations, in particular, began to look for ways the young people could not only help in the organizational daily life, but also put their talents to work in support of sustaining the group. These groups began social entrepreneurial efforts, working under contract to businesses, civic groups, and other nonprofits to generate products, performances, and exhibitions. Like all social entrepreneurs, these young people responded to change by viewing it as an opportunity to shift their resources-talents, creativity, and group work-to areas of higher financial yield, while also maintaining their social mission of providing true participation in the arts for youth. Drama groups began creating works they could take into juvenile detention centers, schools, and parent support groups to stimulate discussion about tough issues, such as sexual abuse, child neglect, drug and alcohol addiction, tobacco use, and safe sex. Media arts groups worked to produce public service announcements for local television stations, as well as documentary videos to complement social studies units in middle schools and high schools. Visual arts groups created murals for baseball and football fields used by professional teams, joined with local veterans to generate special Veterans' Day art exhibitions, and designed textbook covers, greeting cards, and artwork for annual reports of corporations and other nonprofits.

Several articles bring to light the kind of organizational learning these groups experienced as they shifted their attention to include income generation. The distribution of knowledge and skills within the groups helped ensure both quality control and a capacity to undertake a range of projects for remuneration. Such work intensified the value youth organizations placed on the young people themselves-the critical asset necessary to make entrepreneurial efforts work.

One of these articles, still slated to be published in the inaugural issue of After School Matters, appears below. Heath team-teaches a course on Social Entrepreneurship in the Public Policy and Urban Studies programs at Stanford University. See the syllabus for the 1999-2000 term under Lectures, Courses, and Seminars.

Click to read the text of Making Learning Work.