When Derek Ellerman and Katherine Chon entered their business idea into Brown University’s annual entrepreneurship competition in 2002, they knew winning would be a stretch. After all, their idea called the Polaris Project started out as a web portal providing information and resources on human trafficking — or, in other words, a nonprofit.
However, Ellerman and Chon (who wound up in second place in that competition) found that starting a nonprofit and for-profit business is pretty similar: An idea had better be innovative and entrepreneurs are still expected to do their homework. For Ellerman and Chon, that included writing a business plan and checking out the competition, among other things. “We felt, based on looking at the existing organizations, none took the approach we wanted to take,” says Ellerman.
Their idea: Make the Polaris Project indispensable so it’s in a better position to compete for federal funding. To do so, Ellerman and Chon formed partnerships with metropolitan police forces across the country and started a national 24-hour hotline. Based in Washington, D.C., Polaris also advocates for stronger antitrafficking legislation, promoting the criminalization of those responsible for human trafficking rather than those being trafficked. The idea, Ellerman says, is to make the trade in humans so risky that the industry will cease to exist. “We wanted to put people on the ground and link that to long-term social change,” he says.
Ellerman and Chon have plenty of company. Interest in social entrepreneurship, which is sometimes defined as applying business strategies to solving social ills, has been steadily rising in recent years. For example, a number of universities now host social entrepreneurship business competitions while many others offer courses. Prominent institutions including Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Columbia and Oxford have even established centers for social entrepreneurship.
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