Societies of Social Innovation: Voices and Arguments

The team realized they needed to pivot their model in a way they might have missed otherwise. Despite successes like microcredit pioneer Grameen Bank , we should acknowledge that social ventures have not moved the needle on big problems as far as we have hoped.

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By analyzing our failures, we can be more prescriptive about how to build the field and how educators can guide budding social entrepreneurs. One way to start is by acknowledging that not all problems are equally pressing in terms of the financial, environmental, and human costs they impose on society. The field arguably has too big of a tent for social entrepreneurs, often placing nearly equal value on all social ventures simply because they aim to have some kind of positive social impact. Pushing students harder to answer challenging questions, and having honest and open conversations about the relative levels of social impact of proposed ventures, is beginning to happen more at traditional universities.

The social venture field often over-rewards invention, without a robust consideration of whether clever solutions are actually aligned with and likely to advance human progress. Specifically, universities should push their students to answer questions about:. Financial sustainability is another important ingredient, but unless it is subservient to creating strong alignment between problems and solutions, the need to generate revenue will push the venture away from optimizing social impact.

We celebrate these discoveries! This kind of clarity is good for both the general commercial venture and social venture ecosystems, as it increases transparency and efficiency. Universities contribute a great deal to society through research-based inquiry, scholarship, and the preparation of students for work and life.

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When it comes to more rigorous approaches to beneficiary feedback, the greatest advancements have been in education and health care. Colleges and universities have for decades used rigorously collected student survey data to guide improvement efforts. Increasingly, we see interest in using student survey data to assess and improve high schools and middle schools as well.

Other foundations have also sought to include beneficiary perspectives in their assessments, but they remain more the exception than the rule. A survey of foundation CEOs by the Center for Effective Philanthropy CEP found that 27 percent of responding foundations include beneficiary opinions in their assessments. Those that did so report a better understanding of the progress that their foundation is making strategically and a more accurate understanding of the impact the foundation is having on the communities and fields in which it works.

Five years ago, the three of us launched an initiative to help funders, schools, school districts, and education networks hear from their intended beneficiaries: The Gates Foundation was interested in understanding how students were experiencing the schools it was funding and asked CEP to create a program to collect and analyze student perceptual data. In the design stage—guided by a national advisory board that included education leaders, researchers, youth development practitioners, media experts, and a high school student—we analyzed existing efforts.

We were surprised to find that, although a variety of student surveys existed, few seemed to be helping leaders in their decision-making. Many were poorly designed and lacked comparative data, making it difficult to understand what was a good rating on any given question. And most lacked good systems for sharing data with district leaders, principals, or teachers to inform their decisions. Students we spoke with expressed skepticism—if not downright cynicism—about the surveys.

In focus groups during our design phase, students repeatedly said they doubted that anyone really cared about their views, or that survey results would be taken seriously. They rarely saw any data come back to them from the surveys they had completed. On the basis of our analysis, we saw an opportunity to do something better.

We created a program called YouthTruth. Beginning with a pilot program at 20 schools in , YouthTruth has gathered feedback from approximately , students from 28 districts and networks across the United States. YouthTruth was designed to emphasize comparative data, so leaders could easily understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of particular schools and programs. The YouthTruth model shares data in understandable ways: YouthTruth has spurred significant changes by participating schools.

Some schools have revamped curricula in response to the results; some have instituted new disciplinary, mentoring, and student advisory processes; and others have reallocated personnel time. We have never been able to use the data we have received in the past from our student surveys…. This data is incredibly helpful.

That focus on student perceptions as a force for continual improvement is what motivated the Aldine Independent School District in Houston to participate in YouthTruth. The district—with 64, students, 84 percent of whom are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch—won the Broad Prize for Urban Education in Despite its strong performance, school leaders wanted more data and they wanted to hear more directly from students. Houston Endowment picked up the tab. The YouthTruth findings showed numerous opportunities for improvement.

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District leaders are now using the YouthTruth results to guide their planning. Individual schools are drawing on the data in campus decision-making, from revisiting a discipline management plan to augmenting staff development programs and improving two-way communication with students. Aldine is hardly alone. An independent evaluation by researchers from Brandeis University found that 98 percent of school leaders who have participated in YouthTruth had used—or planned touse—YouthTruth data to inform specific changes at their school.

In a more recent survey of repeat participants, 92 percent of school administrators agreed that they had used YouthTruth to make specific programmatic or policy changes at their schools. Districts and schools can add custom questions to get at specific concerns they feel are not sufficiently covered in the core survey. An important design element of YouthTruth is its emphasis on obtaining authentic student responses and closing the loop with students.

YouthTruth emphasizes the importance of candor and reassures students that their confidentiality will be protected. YouthTruth also helps students understand that the survey results will influence change.

Three Ways Universities Can Dramatically Advance Social Enterprise

MTV produced a video that schools can use to introduce students to YouthTruth. Participating schools pledge to share results with students. It also makes it more likely that school leaders will act on the results. For YouthTruth to make a difference in schools and districts over the long haul, it needs to be repeated at regular intervals.