The fallout from the financial crisis represents an extraordinary opportunity for businesses and investments that seek to combine financial returns with benefits for society, Jed Emerson, a long-time proponent of such ventures told participants at the Social Enterprise Summit.

In many ways, he said, the crash is a repudiation of the world view that divides for-profit activity strictly from social and environmental considerations.

The experience of low-cost housing groups and community development financial institutions, for example, show that it wasn’t subprime mortgages themselves that triggered the financial crisis, said Mr. Emerson, who is a managing director at Uhuru Capital Management, in New York.

“These people are doing fine,” he said. “They know how to underwrite. They know their communities. They know these people.’

Instead, the problem was a result of the approaches...

Rubicon Programs is often held up as a model of what successful nonprofit-run business looks like.

The San Francisco Bay Area charity operates two businesses –- a landscaping and grounds-maintenance service and a bakery –- that generate about $18-million annually and provide training and employment for roughly 250 people who are poor or have disabilities.

But for the last several years, Rick Aubry, Rubicon’s long-time president, began to question just how successful the organization’s effort were, he told participants at the Social Enterprise Summit.

“I’ve really personally questioned, Given all the time and energy and sweat and worry that we’ve had, has all of that been equal to the impact that we’ve had?” he said. “And I came to the conclusion: maybe not.”

With foundation grants, Mr. Aubry and several other Rubicon employees have been able to step away from the day-to-day...

As proponents of applying business models to achieving social change talk with policy makers –- and even others in the nonprofit world –- they can’t assume that people understand the term, “social entrepreneurship,” Mitch Landrieu, Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, told participants at the Social Enterprise Summit, here in New Orleans.

“People who are not MBA’s, that didn’t hang out in Ivy League schools, they don’t know what the hell social entrepreneurship is, and they’ll look at you with a blank stare,” he said. “And if you go out on the ground and talk to people who are social entrepreneurs and you tell them that they’re one, they might slap you.”

In 2007, Mr. Landrieu created the first state Office of Social Entrepreneurship.

The problems that the United States face are tremendous, he said, and neither government, business, nor philanthropy can solve them alone.

“Sometimes ...

Five states and one Indian nation have passed legislation recognizing a new type of business that puts its social goals ahead of making money.

In the year since Vermont became the first state to recognize the low-profit limited-liability company, or L3C, Michigan, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah have all followed suit, as has the Indian Crow nation.

The new for-profit designation is designed to make it easier for socially oriented businesses to attract program-related investments from foundations and additional money from private investors.

Too often, foundations feel like they have to go through the lengthy and expensive process of getting a private-letter ruling from the Internal Revenue Service each time they want to make a program-related investment in a for-profit business that has a social mission, says Robert M. Lang, Jr., who developed the new designation and is leading...

The turbulent economy doesn’t appear to be dampening interest in charity-run businesses, according to a new study released today at the Social Enterprise Summit in New Orleans.

A survey of 843 nonprofit organizations found that a little more than half run business ventures, and of the charities that do not run businesses, 57 percent said they were thinking about starting a social enterprise.

The survey was conducted in the middle of September by the Social Enterprise Alliance, Community Wealth Ventures, and Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship.

The organizations that conducted the survey were surprised by the large percentage of groups that said they were thinking about starting their first business ventures, says Heather Peeler, managing director of Community Wealth Ventures, a consulting company in Washington that focuses on social enterprise....