COVID-19 Response

Throughout April and May 2020, the CASE team had the incredible opportunity to speak with thirteen social enterprise leaders about how they are navigating impact and scale during the COVID19 pandemic –and how they are bringing to bear lessons from previous crises such as the Ebola outbreak and times of political upheaval. The interviews are shared […]

As the United States passed the grim milestone of 100,000 lives lost COVID-19 at the end of May, it has become clear that the summer of 2020 will be unlike any other. As many of us continue to shelter in place and focus on activities closer to home than we may have in summers past, […]

Jason Graham-Nye, founder and CEO of gDiapers, an early U.S. certified B corporation that offers families an eco-friendly baby diaper, knows that, for many mission-driven companies, finding aligned capital can be difficult. He realized that there was a huge gap in information for new entrepreneurs who were looking to raise capital where alignment with B Corporation […]

There are many things that routinely worry Courtney Smith and Erika Smith-Punches about owning Piri, an Afro-southern fusion family-run catering business in Durham, North Carolina. They worry about having enough customers. They worry about pricing their food affordably, while also being able to pay all of their staff a living wage. They worry about buying […]

When Jonathan Woodward, Duke MBA Class of 2019 and Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) Scholar, sent out the initial Fuqua First Jobs Newsletter, he thought no one would sign up. In a mere 48 hours, however, all of that changed. Over 300 people signed up almost instantly and dozens of Fuqua alumni, […]

How do social enterprises and the funders that support them achieve impact at scale even in times of crisis, such as outbreak of war or disease? In light of the mass disruption caused by COVID-19, we are working with our Scaling Pathways partners on a new video interview series called Scaling Through Mass Disruption, which captures […]

When Kiersten Chresfield, class of 2020 Daytime MBA student at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) I3 Fellow, imagined her last term at Fuqua, it did not involve spending her time searching for a job in the midst of a global pandemic. However, in light […]

As part of our rapid response effort to support social entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 pandemic, CASE at Duke held a free webinar on April 16, 2020 on managing capital raising during the crisis. The webinar was attended by over 400 people from over 50 countries, who listened to CASE’s Cathy Clark, Caroline Bressan from Open […]

Yesterday I posted about making some of our learning resources available to entrepreneurs globally to help with COVID-19 realities. And in less than 8 hours, nearly 200 new visitors from 32 countries came to casesmartimpact.com to get free access to our video training on how to strategize, target and close the right impact investing deal, and to […]

Dear Friends,  We are writing to you today because we know if you are an entrepreneur, accelerator program, funder, investor, event organization, membership group, government agency, or a university – OK, pretty much anyone – your world has turned upside down in the last week. The COVID19 virus pandemic is scary and it is affecting every part of our lives.  […]