“If we can imagine something, there is a good chance that it will happen. If we don’t imagine it, there is almost no chance of it happening” – Professor Muhammad Yunus
When Yunus Social Business started our journey to support social business entrepreneurs across the globe, we imagined creating a world of three zeroes. But we soon realised that support to social business entrepreneurs should go beyond just providing financial instruments.
To further grow the social entrepreneurship movement, we are launching an online education programme with Coursera on the management of social businesses. The first specialisation on the strategy and finance for the lifecycle of a social business is live from today!
The content of the program is based on Yunus Social Business Bengaluru Funds and our partners’ experience of working with hundreds of social businesses. We have crystallised our varied learnings into tools and case studies to provide learners with an objective lens to solve various business problems.
Coursera is an affordable and wide reaching platform for audiences who otherwise would not be able to access traditional business education at universities. It boasts a collaborative approach to learning, which we believe is essential in the journey of any social business entrepreneur.
We also thank our partner for the finance program – Professor Gautam Kaul, who is a well-known MOOC teacher with over two million subscriptions.
The course Strategy and Finance for the lifecycle of a Social Business goes live on Coursera today. View it here.
Our goal is to foster partnerships between social businesses and corporations where corporations can directly buy products and services from social businesses, giving social businesses the chance to scale.
This is for growth-stage businesses that seek to solve a social problem. We are looking for businesses that want to level up and become ready for investment. Social Businesses that seek to apply to the programme should be generating revenues of around US$250,000.
Since the COVID-19 crisis began in January this year, we at Yunus Social Business have been acutely aware of the potential threat it poses to the populations we support. While governments in wealthy European countries have been subsidising employee salaries, this has not been the case for the emerging countries in which our portfolio Social Businesses operate.