The term “social entrepreneur” has entered the language of American institutions, from business schools and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Investopedia. Like “diversity and equity,” this phrase can seem to unsuspecting observers like an unobjectionable buzzword connoting the virtuous intent to address some social ill. Indeed, groups ranging from the Left to the nominal Right employ the term “social entrepreneur” in roughly that way.
But much like diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice, social entrepreneurship eludes clear definition—leaving it open to use by actors whose intentions are less than wholly virtuous or straightforward, and whose aims would not command widespread assent were they spelled out in plain terms.
On the Left, “social entrepreneur” tends be roughly synonymous with the phrase “change maker,” referring especially to those who advocate for policy change. Social entrepreneurship was popularized in the 1980s by William Dayton, founder of the worldwide philanthropy network Ashoka (whose website now proclaims that “the world requires everyone to be a changemaker.”
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