Turns out Civiside is Social Enterprise!

I had never heard the definition of Social Entrepreneurship until today and was pleasantly surprised to learn that Civiside is a textbook case of it.

Lauren mentioned the term in our conversation the other day, and I decided to give it a look this morning. The definition, according to J. Gregory Dees...

"in his paper "The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship”, mentions that social entrepreneurs play the role of change agents, by:

-Adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value)
-Recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission,
-Engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning,
-Acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand, and
-Exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created".

I suppose the relative obscurity of the term combined with the counterintuitive nature of the concept, is what is apparently so revolting to some MBA/Business Prof. types that I have run into. They all seem to come to the conclusion that Civiside is not worth doing because it will not make alot of money. While I have known intuitively that I will do Civiside regardless of the monetary outcome, I have been hard pressed to explain why...until now. Having an established term makes it significantly easier to explain why I am doing what I am doing, despite the apparent lack of financial incentive.

With that said, I completely disagree with some of these naysayers. I do believe that Civiside will make money, and even be an attractive acquisition at some point. I may not have proven it yet, but I think that with some of the recent learning I have done, and connections I have made, the service is well on it's way to becoming viable and profitable.