We also expect to see increased interaction and cooperation among social enterprise accelerators, as they work together to help more social entrepreneurs achieve their goals and dreams of positive social and environmental impact.

So what are the factors that enable good social enterprises?

Social enterprises differ from traditional businesses in their goals and priorities: they are committed to effecting social or environmental change especially among the world’s poor rather than simply generating as much profit as possible. During those 13 years, we have learned a lot about the characteristics and capabilities that determine social enterprise accelerator excellence.

We have identified three dynamic, interactive attributes important for effective acceleration of social enterprises:

Actively selecting social entrepreneurs, including assessing their stage of development
Offering a range of programs suited to different developmental stages
Providing in-depth, long-term support by executive-level mentors

Let’s look at each of these attributes more closely.

Social entrepreneur selection

Accelerators need a clear idea of the social entrepreneurs they want to work with. In our case, we focus on social enterprises that are ‘social impact first’, meaning that their primary mission is to deliver goods and services to those in need.

Using the Monitor Group’s “Blueprint to Scale” study, we assess prospective social enterprises to determine where they fit along the developmental spectrum of: Blueprint > Validate > Prepare > Scale.

‘Blueprint’ is the seed or ideating stage; ‘validate’ is the start-up stage, usually one to three years in business; and ‘prepare’ is the growth stage where enterprises are beginning to scale. At the end of the in-residence training, entrepreneurs pitch their business plans to an audience of impact investors.

Executive-level mentoring

One of the most important attributes of a great social enterprise accelerator is the quality of its mentoring program.

It takes time for a mentor to get to know and understand the intricacies of any social enterprise; to figure out what gaps exist between the enterprise’s goals and its capabilities; and to motivate the social entrepreneur to navigate the challenges of their chosen path.