Social enterprises combine the passion and aspirations of a social mission with the business discipline, innovation and determination commonly associated with a for-profit business. We like to support those enterprises that have tremendous potential for high social and environmental impact.
Social entrepreneurs are change agents playing a major role in addressing the social and environmental problems of our time. They leverage the vast power of the market, technology and innovative business models. Social entrepreneurs are visionaries and innovators, taking high risks, and many times starting something from scratch. Social entrepreneurs focus on bringing affordable, critical services and products, such as health, water, and electricity, to the poor through market-oriented approaches.
Our goal is to increase the impact of these social enterprises, specifically by helping them scale operations. We support social enterprises, and the social entrepreneurs who lead these hybrid organizations, by providing targeted interventions such as peer to peer learning, seed funding, access to business planning, mentoring, networking and access to significant investment capital.
Supporting social entrepreneurship is a vital element of the Foundation’s investment portfolio. In addition to investing directly in social enterprises, the KL Felicitas Foundation supports organizations and initiatives that build the capacity and business acumen of social entrepreneurs.
The Foundation also makes active use of grants to provide critical capacity building assistance and operational subsidy that help enterprises reach self-sustainability.
Current social enterprise and social entrepreneur programs that we support include:
- Dasra Social-Impact (Mumbai), our pilot capacity building program for Social Enterprises in India.
- Social-Impact International
- Global Social Benefit Incubator (University of Santa Clara, CA)
- Hawaiʻi Investment Ready Program
- Investment Ready Program in Central and Eastern Europe