Key Principles of Social Enterprises: Has a clear goal as its core purpose

Reinvests the majority of its profits in order to achieve its mission
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Unlike traditional enterprises, social enterprises exist to benefit society and the environment more widely, not solely owners or shareholders.
Regularly monitors and evaluates its impact across all areas of its business model
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Like all other businesses, social enterprises must measure and manage all areas of theirimpact in order to accurately report on how progress is being made towards their goal.

Social entrepreneurs and those involved in starting social enterprises are typically creative, passionate, and empathetic individuals who have some understanding of the nuance and complexity of the world around them.

Utilizing entrepreneurial business principles, social enterprises seek to improve areas such as:
Health
Environment
Governance
Finance
Community development
Education
Gender equality
Technology
Workforce development
International development
Tips and Tools for Social Entrepreneurship
Framing Your Challenge
To fully understand an issue, you must properly frame the challenge by asking the right questions, beginning with: What is the problem I’m trying to solve? Why are existing solutions not working? And broadly speaking, what are some possible solutions to the problem?
As ideas for solutions develop, you should also be continually asking yourself: How does my solution drive impact and take into account social and cultural contexts? If you don’t know the answer to either portion of this last question, it is imperative that you take a step back, reframe your challenge, and revisit other ideas or develop new ones. While entrepreneurs tend to thrive in ambiguity, it is a disservice to the target audience and customers of an enterprise if you do not fully understand the area you are working in.
As you begin to grasp the challenge at hand, it is also important to investigate how current or competing solutions are handling the challenge. What are those enterprises doing and why? Who or what is funding the competitor’s solution? How is the other solution being implemented and how does it differ from your own? Having insight into what competitors are doing will empower you to reconfigure your own solution to be unique and an improvement from what was being done before.