Nonprofit leaders have long fantasized about creating businesses that generate earned income to fund their operations. The social entrepreneur’s bottom line is her missions. Making more money, only to fritter it away on ineffective or inefficient programs, is a failure, not a success. Because it is unrestricted, earned income provides no inherent check on the quality of the programs it funds. Social entrepreneurs should not let the excitement of creating wealth distract them from their central task of deploying that wealth in truly worthwhile ways.
Who Cares, November/December 1997, p 8 – 9
By Gregory J Dees
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