Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship Guidelines

Core support
A core support grant is usually given as unrestricted, flexible funding that can be
used to cover any costs associated with an organization’s ongoing charitable activities,
provided the organization does not change its mission or alter any goals or objectives
negotiated as part of the grant. Grants given as restricted funding must be used for
a specific purpose or project.

Although the Skoll Foundation gives core support funding whenever legally possible,
it works with each Awardee to identify and commit to the achievement of specific core
organizational goals and objectives. Detailed program budgets and financial
reports are required for grants and loans governed by a fiscal sponsor or expenditure
responsibility agreements, including for-profit organizations and some foreign nonprofits.
All awardees, even those receiving core support, are required to report on a regular
basis on progress toward negotiated objectives.

Equilibrium change
Equilibrium describes a stable state, generally economic or social, controlled by and
benefiting established entities. The social entrepreneur sees the limitations of an existing
equilibrium and offers a more efficient solution with the potential to benefit those not served
by the existing model. Skoll is seeking social entrepreneurs who have created and are
implementing new, large-scale approaches that can change the equilibrium by fundamentally
tranforming the lives of marginalized populations . The ultimate example of equilibrium
change would be to eliminate a problem by solving its root cause or to create global impact
by driving universal adoption of a new innovation by all individuals who address the same issue.

Issue area, critical challenge
The Skoll Foundation funds social entrepreneurs working to solve problems in the following
issue areas which have been selected because of their importance to addressing the critical
challenges of our time. Many applicants work in more than one of these areas. If you apply,
you will be asked to designate a primary, and if appropriate, a secondary area of focus.

Among the issue areas are:

• Health, such as disease control, access to health care and system problems, pollution and
toxins, population control and lifestyle
• Environmental sustainability, such as biodiversity and depletion of natural resources, global
warming, water, oceans and waste (general and nuclear)
• Peace and security, such as war, nuclear weapons, terrorism, arms and drug trafficking,
government involvement, conflict resolution, and sustainable development and education
in conflict zones
• Institutional responsibility, such as unethical labor practices, bribery and corruption,
unethical government (e.g., executive pay), shareholder activism, business and the environment,
irresponsible marketing, unethical sourcing and procurement, and global media integrity
• Economic and social equity, such as poverty and distribution of wealth, drugs, crime and
violence, microfinance, homelessness and affordable housing, and education

Large-scale impact, systemic change
See also “equilibrium change.” Systemic social change delves behind immediate problems,
involves new ways of applying resources to underlying causes and results in tangible and
enduring benefits. Systemic change occurs when an outcome or goal has been attained and
the subsequent result either eliminates the cause of the problem or alters programs, policies,
funding streams and/or services to reduce the impact of the problem on a long-term basis.

Mezzanine stage
Mezzanine-stage funding is a venture capital term used to describe later-stage financing for a
company that is between a startup (seed funding) phase and an initial public offering. We deem
a social entrepreneurial organization to be at the mezzanine level if it has fully pilot tested its idea,
documented its outcomes and developed a written plan to scale up its innovations, but has
not yet achieved large geographic scale or had its idea widely adopted.

Replicate, scale up
To replicate or scale up a program is to significantly increase its impact in size, amount or
extent. Scaling an impact can occur in many ways, including growing an organization’s own
capacity, developing independent affiliates or franchising, encouraging widespread adoption
of the model by others, or through a combination of scaling approaches. The most competitive
applicants have a clear, achievable replication plan that leads to exponential growth of their
innovation, as opposed to slow, incremental growth over time.

For more in-depth information of how other social entrepreneurs are working to achieve
scale, we encourage you to visit www.socialedge.org, where you will find multiple
discussions and blogs about what it means to overcome the real-life barriers that social
entrepreneurs face as they seek to achieve scale.

Social entrepreneurs
Just as entrepreneurs change the face of business, social entrepreneurs act as the change
agents for society, seizing opportunities others miss by improving systems, inventing new
approaches and creating sustainable solutions to change society for the better. However,
unlike business entrepreneurs who are motivated by profits, social entrepreneurs are
motivated to improve society. Despite this difference, social entrepreneurs are just as
innovative and change oriented as their business counterparts, searching for new and
better ways to solve the problems that plague society.

Social entrepreneurs that meet Skoll's criteria for Awards can be characterized by their
ability to:
• Recognize an unjust equilibrium that leads to the exclusion, marginalization or suffering
of vulnerable members of our society
• Identify an opportunity within this unjust equilibrium to change the existing system and,
through inspiration, creativity, direct action, courage and fortitude, implement a better solution
• Demonstrate potential to scale up their innovation until they have replaced the old system
with a new, stable equilibrium that alleviates the suffering of the targeted group and
creates a better future