Skoll Foundation

Headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley, the Skoll Foundation was created in 1999 by Jeff Skoll, the first employee and first president of eBay. The Foundation supports social entrepreneurship. Skoll chairs the Foundation, which today makes grants in excess of $40M per year. Its mission is to advance systemic change to benefit communities around the world by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs. The Skoll Foundation invests in social entrepreneurs through its annual Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and grants to support the ecosystem around social entrepreneurs, including the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford. It connects social entrepreneurs through its online community, Social Edge, at www.socialedge.org, as well as via the annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford. It celebrates social entrepreneurs through media projects such as a four-part "New Heroes" public television documentary broadcast in 2004; partnerships with other media outlets, including Sundance, NPR, PBS and Public Radio International; and the Skoll Awards ceremony at the Skoll World Forum each spring.

Through mid-2008, the Skoll Foundation had named 50 social entrepreneur organizations from around the world as recipients of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. These are:

Afghan Institute of Learning Aflatoun (formerly Child Savings International)

Amazon Conservation Team

American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE)

Arzu

Barefoot College

Benetech

CAMFED

Ceres

CIDA City Schools

Citizen Schools

Ciudad Saludable

College Summit

Committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI)

Digital Divide Data

Escuela Nueva

Free the Children

Friends International

Friends of the Mothers

Fundacion Paraguaya

Global Footprint Network

Gram Vikas

Half the Sky Foundation

Health Care Without Harm

IDE-India

Inst. For Development Studies and Practices (IDSP Pakistan)

Institute for One World Health

International Bridges to Justice

Kashf Foundation

KickStart

Kiva

Manchester Bidwell Corporation

Marine Stewardship Council

Partners in Health

Peaceworks Foundation

Population and Community Development Agency (PDA)

Renascer Child Health

Riders for Health

Room to Read

Root Capital (formerly Ecologic)

Roots of Peace

Rugmark

Search for Common Ground

Sonidos de la Terra

TransFair

Verite

VillageReach

Visayan Forum Foundation

Witness

YouthBuild

In addition, Skoll has made ecosystem grants to The Acumen Fund, Ashoka, The Carter Center, Duke University's Center for the Advanced of Social Entrepreneurship, the Santa Clara College's Global Social Business Incubator, and a number of other organizations supporting social entrepreneurship. In November 2003, the Skoll Foundation donated £4.4m to the Saïd Business School for the creation of The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in order to promote the advancement of social entrepreneurship worldwide. In addition to delivering an innovative teaching programme, the Skoll Centre has developed a portfolio of research which employs theory but that is alsovaluable to practitioners in the field. The Centre acts as a network hub for social entrepreneurship, linking together key actors in the sector and contributing towards creating new and effective partnerships for sustainable social change. It engages in social innovation and aims to have a decisive influence on policy.

RESEARCH AT THE SKOLL CENTRE FOR SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The Skoll Centre’s research ranges across three main topic areas identified bypractitioners as of key importance: governance; resources; impact. In each area, avariety of scholarly work is being undertaken. This is disseminated in both appliedworking paper formats and in peer-reviewed academic books and journals.

"International Forum on Social Entrepreneurship"

In the last week of May 2007, the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship [http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/skoll/] , based atOxford University’s Saïd Business School, and the Institute for SocialEntrepreneurship at Zhejiang University in China, jointly organised an InternationalForum on Social Entrepreneurship. The International Forum on SocialEntrepreneurship represents a first step in building ongoing links between Asian andwestern social entrepreneurship. "This Forum provided a venue for leadingacademics, policy-makers, and social entrepreneurs in China and other Asiancountries to report on their work, share knowledge about best practices, and focus aresearch agenda,". "This Forum provided a venue for leading academics, policymakers,and social entrepreneurs in China and other Asian countries to report ontheir work, share knowledge about best practices, and focus a research agenda." DrAlex Nicholls."International Conference on Social Entrepreneurship in India"

The conference was oranised by UnLtd India in conjunction with the Skoll Centrefor Social Entrepreneurship, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Dasra (TBC).(Further partners may be added). The main objective of the conference was topromote and accelerate the development of social entrepreneurship in India. Theyachieved this by:- Celebrating social entrepreneurship as a tool for social change- Highlighting the developments in the field of social entrepreneurship in Indiaand globally- Providing practical skills and knowledge that can be employed in the field- Creating links between social entrepreneurs and other stakeholders in Indiaand internationally.Over the course of three days the conference was attended by 85 organisations fromIndia and Europe.

EDUCATION AT THE SKOLL CENTRE FOR SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

"Skoll Scholarships"

Each year, the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship awards five full scholarshipsto individuals working in the field who wish to enter the one-year full-time MBAprogramme. Each scholarship covers all the fees for the course, as well as providingan allowance for living expenses and travel. Skoll Scholars usually have a strongtrack record in social entrepreneurship and intend to return to work in this sectorafter their studies. They take all the social entrepreneurship elements of the MBA,which comprise three eightweek modules and two major social business projectsdesigned to positively impact a specific social problem. This amounts toapproximately one-third of the whole MBA course content. To be considered for aSkoll scholarship, candidates need to provide evidence of the personal qualitiesstrongly correlated with social entrepreneurship, such as persistence in pursuit of asocial benefit goal; willingness to face failure and start again; a bias towards actionrather than reflection; a tendency to explore the environment for opportunities andresources; a willingness to take personal, and sometimes financial, risks; and a habitof developing a network and exploiting its members. In addition, candidates need todemonstrate how a business education can contribute to the wider development orthe local community or community of interest they work with in the socialentrepreneurship movement.

External links

* [http://www.skollfoundation.org Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Website]
* [http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/skoll/ Said Business School Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship]