Donation Promotes Replicating Social Business ProgramsGummi Fridriksson

Introduction• A Silicon Valley entrepreneur has donated US$1.5 million toward

research into how successful social business programs can be replicated to serve more people effectively.

The donation was made to the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University, which will look at how to replicate business models for programs in its Global Social Benefit Institute. The center will identify and document successful social business programs, research potential locations for replicated programs, and engage with entrepreneurs who can implement them.

Thane Kreiner, the executive director of the Miller Center, said that to address poverty in a meaningful way, leaders must reproduce successful business models “in parallel” and across geographic regions.

Donations•This approach can save significant money and

other resources over models that require starting from scratch to address similar problems in different regions around the world.

“Social entrepreneurs are more likely to build successful enterprises if they can start with a blueprint or proof of concept that has already been developed and confirmed somewhere else in the real world,” said Jon Freeman, who made the $1.5 million donation.