NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, October 31, 2014

By Anne Field

The Skoll Foundation just kicked off its second annual Social Entrepreneurs Challenge. Open to its 87 awardees, 68 are participating.

I usually cover for-profit social enterprise. But given Skoll’s reputation and the scope of these social entrepreneurs’ work, it seemed like a pertinent event to cover.

The competition is taking the form of a crowd-funding campaign, using the services of CrowdRise, which has a fundraising platform for nonprofits. Visit the home page and you’ll see little sections for each participating organization, with the group’s name and amount raised so far, among other information. Click on the box, a la Kickstarter, and you’ll get more information about the organization.

This isn’t, however, a situation where winners win and losers get nothing. (In Kickstarter campaigns, of course, you try to raise a specified amount of money in a certain period of time. If you don’t attract that sum, you don’t receive any money). Instead, Skoll is giving out a total of $1.25 million in prize money and incentives. And social entrepreneurs keep the money they raise. Also there are ten slots for winners. First place gets $100,000, while tenth place wins $10,000. (That’s up from last year, when there were five slots).