SAGE Judging Criterion #2 for the SEB category is:

Has the business demonstrated significant social impact, either through their products and services or through the numbers of disadvantaged people they employ (as a social enterprise)? Evidence of impact can include media coverage (e.g., newspaper, TV, radio) and potential market reach (e.g., regional, national, global scale).

Note: This criterion is worth 36 points total: 16 for written annual report and 20 for oral presentation.

Interpretation:

In their annual report and verbal presentation, how effective were the students in demonstrating significant social impact. The Ashoka Foundation, which strives to shape a global, entrepreneurial, competitive citizen sector: one that allows social entrepreneurs to thrive and enables the world’s citizens to think and act as changemakers.

Some entrepreneurs explicitly make social impact the centerpiece of their business models. Thus, these social enterprise businesses (SEBs) directly address social needs through their products or services, or through the numbers of disadvantaged people they employ. SEBs can be legally structured either as nonprofits or as for-profit businesses. The SEB must demonstrate the ability to be a going concern through the use of earned revenue, either by achieving profitability already or by creating a clear path toward profitability.

Note that SAGE believes that, in order for an SEB to be sustainable, it is imperative that they have an earned revenue strategy, rather than rely primarily (or totally) on “patron saints” who believe in the SEB’s mission. Examples of such patron saints include corporate donations, foundation donations, philanthropist contributions or government grants. These patron saints pledge their financial resources to keep the SEB running as a going concern. However, once the funding runs out, the SEB goes out of business.

Like Ashoka, SAGE believes that for a successful social venture to pass its “knockout test,” the business must be new and potentially pattern-changing, relative to prior attempts.

Is the SEB practical? Scalable? Cost effective? Examples of successful SEBs can be found at http://ashoka.org/impact. They include a company called Childline, which has provided direct assistance to more than 26,000 street children in Mumbai, India. Another company has helped cut rural electricity costs for over 1 million people in Brazil. This innovation has spread to 23 countries worldwide. A third example Martin Fisher started a company called KickStart. He and his colleagues have invented low-cost, human-powered irrigation pumps and other simple moneymaking tools, coupled with a sustainable and replicable supply-chain model that enables subsistence farmers to use the equipment to become self-reliant entrepreneurs. This process is transforming the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor Africans by enabling them to double or triple their annual net family incomes.