Eitan Arom: UCLA should foster social entrepreneurship

There are no equations scrawled on the board for the Economics 173 lecture. All the mainstays of the typical economics course – the supply and demand graphs, the arcane definitions – are absent.

Also missing is the lecturer at the front of the class.

Instead, economics professor Andrew Atkeson stands off to the side, observing and only occasionally dropping in with a comment or question.

The title of the class is “Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship.” For two quarters, groups of four students each will work with the staff of a nonprofit organization to develop a financially feasible business plan that also addresses a social ill.

In June, a panel of foundation executives and investors will choose the best plan – and award the students $30,000 to get their venture of the ground.

Social enterprises are exciting for UCLA in particular because they can be small, accessible to students and economically sustainable. The students in Economics 173 are learning real, invaluable skills in business development while also making a social impact, simultaneously fulfilling two central goals of the University of California: service and education.

Particularly since Ethos Water began raising funds for development projects in 2001, there has been a proliferation of products that address one social problem or another. Entering into this market requires ingenuity and compassion – two resources that UCLA students have in abundance.

For various reasons, these resources seem to be underutilized at UCLA.

For one thing, social entrepreneurship is more practical than intellectual, meaning professors may be hesitant to bring it into the classroom. Besides that, students may be more interested in their job prospects than social good: a UCLA Higher Education Research Institute survey of over 200,000 incoming freshman across the country last year suggested that getting a better job was the No. 1 reason to go to college.

The cause of social entrepreneurship is further hindered by the fact that few people actually seem to know what it means.

Social entrepreneurship is the building of a business that puts public over private interest, said Betsy Densmore, president of the Academies for Social Entrepreneurship.

Since last year, Densmore and her staff have been teaming up with the UCLA Division of Social Sciences to teach social entrepreneurship.

That skill is one that UCLA as an institution and a community should make every effort to teach its students.

On every level, this university should be asking how to put UCLA’s social capital to work – how do we make UCLA a campus of empathy and ingenuity?

One method to pave the way for social entrepreneurship is to coax students with upper division credit, as is the case with students enrolled in Atkeson’s lecture. But there are other, more innovative ways to accomplish that goal.

Organizations like the Undergraduate Students Association Council could offer students both logistical and financial support in these social endeavours.

The community service scholarship, an initiative of the student government, is one way to offer this kind of support. But unlike the $30,000 business grant awarded in Economics 173, the community service scholarship helps financially support students that do community service – more like a stipend than an investment.

Instead, the council might look into establishing a mechanism like a grant or a fund that could offer much-needed financial assistance to student nonprofits.

Outside of money, workshops and networking opportunities organized by the student government or other organizations could provide real operational support for entrepreneurial students.

Becca Holt, the director of the UCLA chapter of a nonprofit called Nourish International and a former news writer at the Daily Bruin, said that help from university institutions was not always forthcoming.

“We’ve chosen to rely on outside funding – grants through our national office and not through the university – because they’re more easily navigable for us,” said Holt, a fourth-year international development student. “A small business grant through the university would be an amazing thing.”

Nourish International is an archetype of social enterprise on campus, raising money through various ventures like a thrift sale on campus and selling pizza to partygoers in Westwood Village. The money, in turn, goes to Nourish International’s nonprofit partner organizations that fight poverty overseas.

But Nourish International is far from the only such organization at UCLA. Swipes for the Homeless, a multi-campus nonprofit that recently won an award from President Barack Obama, started in the dorms at UCLA.

Our greatest social resource as a campus is our entrepreneurial spirit, and putting that resource to use is central to our mission as a university. Social justice must be an integral part of our identity.

In order for UCLA to truly reach its potential as a community, the idea of social entrepreneurship should permeate every level of the institution – from the highest administrative post to the average Joe or Josephine Bruin.

Email Arom at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected] or tweet us @DBOpinion.