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Volunteer
affiliations
Jerr Boschee currently serves as a voluntary member of the Board of Directors or the Advisory Council for the following organizations:
Encore! Service Corps
International:
Board Chair
SAGE ("Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship"):
Board Chair
Advisory Council
The National
Peace Corps Association:
Advisory Council
National Urban League
Economic Opportunity Institute:
Advisory Council
The National Center
on Nonprofit Enterprise:
Advisory Council
Founder
and Executive Director
Biographical information
Jerr Boschee has spent the past 30 years as an advisor to social entrepreneurs in the United States and abroad. To date he has delivered seminars or conducted workshops in 42 states and 15 countries and has long been recognized as one of the founders of the social enterprise movement worldwide. The NonProfit Times named him to its 2004, 2005 and 2006 nonprofit sector "Power & Influence Top 50" lists.
Mr. Boschee is Executive Director of The Institute for Social Entrepreneurs, which he created in 1999, and is Chair and CEO of Encore! Service Corps International, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2003 to re-deploy former Peace Corps Volunteers and staff members on short-term assignments in their areas of professional expertise. He also served from 2001 to 2004 as an advisor to England's Department of Trade and Industry Social Enterprise Unit.
Mr. Boschee helped start The National Center for Social Entrepreneurs in 1984 and served as President and CEO from 1990 to 1999. He has also been the catalyst and co-founder of The Forum for Nonprofit Leadership (1987); The Affirmative Business Alliance of North America (1989), currently known as the Americas Group of Workability International; The National Gathering for Social Entrepreneurs (1997), now known as the Social Enterprise Alliance; and many other organizations. The Alliance and the Gathering were the first two membership organizations created for entrepreneurs in the field of social enterprise. In addition, he has been a guest lecturer at academic institutions such as the University of Oxford (Said School of Business), the University of Cambridge (Judge School of Management), Carnegie Mellon University (H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy & Management), Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management), Duke University, Stanford University, University of Minnesota (Carlson School of Management), and many others.
The Institute for Social Entrepreneurs provides seminars, workshops and consulting services for nonprofit entrepreneurs throughout the United States and draws on a virtual community of social entrepreneurs and others to collaborate on specific projects. Mr. Boschee is also continuing to partner with individuals and organizations to foster social entrepreneurship around the world; his work thus far has taken him to England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, India, Japan and Ghana.
During the past 40 years, Mr. Boschee has also been an executive for a Fortune 100 company, an executive for both regional and national nonprofits, managing editor for a chain of newspapers, a Peace Corps Volunteer, and a frequent writer, speaker and trainer in the social service and public policy arenas. He is currently Board Chair for SAGE ("Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship") and is a member of the advisory committee for the Economic Opportunity Institute of the National Urban League; the national advisory councils for the Social Enterprise Alliance and the National Peace Corps Association; the adjunct faculty at The School for Social Entrepreneurs (London, England);and the Practice Advisory Council for the National Center on Nonprofit Enterprise.
Mr. Boschee served previously as Senior Fellow at the Northland Institute (a national think tank devoted to social enterprise; as a member of the Board of Directors for a nonprofit management assistance consulting firm; as a member of the international advisory council for NESsT, the Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-Sustainability Team, which helps civil society organizations in Central Europe and South America develop entrepreneurial strategies; as a member of the nomination board for the annual FAST Company magazine "social capitalist" awards program; and as a member of the adjunct faculties at the University of St. Thomas, Louisiana State University-Shreveport, the League of American Orchestras Management Academy, and The Learning Institute for Nonprofit Organizations (a distance learning subsidiary of The Society for Nonprofit Organizations). He also served as a monthly columnist for the on-line magazine Social Enterprise Reporter from 2004 through 2006, and in 2006 as an assessor for the World Bank Development Marketplace competition
Mr. Boschee is the author or editor of five books, including the award-winning Migrating from Innovation to Entrepreneurship: How Nonprofits are Moving toward Sustainability and Self-Sufficiency (2006). In addition to the title essay, the book also includes A Practical Lexicon for Social Entrepreneurs that defines more than 80 key terms, some in the form of mini-tutorials; a print bibliography; and a list of annotated electronic links. Other recent books include The Social Enterprise Sourcebook (2001), which contains profiles of 14 nonprofits that have successfully started social sector businesses; Boschee on Marketing (2007), which contains 21 of the columns he wrote for the Social Enterprise Reporter; and A Reader in Social Enterprise, a collection of 20 essays by leaders in the field.
Mr. Boschee has three grown children and one grandchild. He and his wife, Linda Ball, live in Dallas, Texas.
Bibliography
Books
- 2007: Boschee on Marketing
- 2006: Migrating from Innovation to Entrepreneurship: How Nonprofits are Moving toward Sustainability and Self-Sufficiency
- 2001: The Social Enterprise Sourcebook: Profiles of Social Purpose Businesses Operated by Nonprofit Organizations
- 2000: A Reader in Social Enterprise (co-editor)
- 1998: Merging Mission and Money: A Board Member's Guide to Social Entrepreneurship
Podcasts
Interview of Institute Executive Director Jerr Boschee by Tim Zak of Globeshakers (26 minutes)
-- please allow about 30 seconds for the interview to load on your browser
Articles and essays
"Strategic marketing for social entrepreneurs (adapted from a four-part series appearing orginally in the Social Enterprise Reporter)
"Eight basic principles for nonprofit entrepreneurs" (from Nonprofit World)
"Keep or Kill? Score Your Programs: Use This Tool to Decide Which Activities to Nurture - and Which to Abandon (from Nonprofit World)
"Recycling Ex-Cons, Addicts and Prostitutes: The Mimi Silbert Story" (co-written with Syl Jones; published April 2000 in conjunction with The Second National Gathering for Social Entrepreneurs in Miami)
"Social Entrepreneurship: Some Nonprofits are Not Only Thinking about the Unthinkable, They're Doing It - Running a Profit" (from Across the Board, the Conference Board magazine)
"The Boschee Report"
OCTOBER 2008
OP-ED ESSAY
FROM THE SUNDAY,
OCTOBER 19, ISSUE OF THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
Sunday Forum:
Doing good while
doing well
As Wall Street reels
and the safety net frays,
the growing number of social entrepreneurs offers hope
even in the scariest of times, says JERR BOSCHEE
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Another perfect storm is gathering.
The world's financial markets are gyrating; capitalist greed is hiding in the attic, shame-faced; and the social safety net is fraying.
Jeremiahs on the right and left cry doom. None of us, they claim, has learned from the past. All of us, they predict, will be equally stunned next time the system doesn't work.
Not everybody ...
An almost invisible cadre of men and women throughout the country -- around the globe! -- realized 40 years ago that traditional ways of doing business and operating nonprofits were inadequate.
Trickle-down hasn't worked. Corporate social responsibility hasn't been enough. Philanthropy and government subsidies are strained and falling short. But there's a new movement afoot worldwide. I see it every day in my students at Carnegie Mellon University who are seeking a career in social enterprise.
They're not pursuing degrees in business or social work. For them, it's not an either/or choice. They're finding new routes to old destinations -- and their energy and excitement is invigorating.
Social enterprises go beyond the traditional concept of corporate social responsibility by directly confronting the major unmet needs of society through the businesses themselves rather than grappling with them indirectly through socially responsible practices, such as corporate philanthropy, equitable wages and the use of environmentally friendly raw materials.
An explosion of activity took place in the 1970s and 1980s as entrepreneurs, small businesses and corporations discovered the social markets: Adult day care and childhood learning centers, low-income housing, vocational training and employment programs, home modification services for the disabled and elderly, hospice care, outpatient mental health and rehab services, computer-based education for self-paced learners, alternative schools for potential high school dropouts, private sector prisons and universities, wind farms, psychiatric and substance-abuse centers, home care for the elderly and dozens of others.
Thousands of nonprofits began joining them in the 1990s -- especially in businesses whose employees primarily are people who are developmentally disabled, psychiatrically unstable, recovering substance abusers, former prisoners, physically challenged, or grappling with dozens of other disabilities and disadvantages. Many of these businesses provide hundreds of jobs and have annual sales of $50 million or more. Collectively, the 117 members of the trade association Workability International employ more than 5 million people in 33 countries and generate annual sales of $8.5 billion.
The energized young men and women in my classes are determined to do good and do well simultaneously -- and they are joining a movement that's gaining traction all over the world. They realize that when business strategies are driven by quarter-to-quarter earnings and Wall Street tickers, there is no ultimate safety net. When a business world driven by profit alone begins to crumble and government races to the rescue, the social safety net is in jeopardy -- and the turmoil this month is just another reminder that an economy resting on a single bottom line is always in danger.
Social enterprises have a double bottom line: Social impact and financial viability. Some have actually grown to be million-dollar companies, but most remain small- or medium-sized. Yet they survive, even in the worst of times, because they've been driven by a proper balance of mission and money.
My students know that. They realize they can use the best practices of business to address social needs -- and the best practices of nonprofits to inform their pursuit. They have big ideas. They want to change the world. And they will, one social enterprise at a time, along with thousands of others just like them who are emerging from colleges and universities all over the world.
