Used to be that when entrepreneurs hit it big, they'd put their loot into a venture capital fund to have an excuse to stay in the start-up game or into a philanthropic foundation to "give back", providing funds to worthwhile non-profit programs. But some of the savviest tech entrepreneurs of the last decade, most recently the founders of Google as described in today's USA Today, and the founders of eBay, Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll, are using their wealth to invest in non-profits pursuing businesses in support of mission and "socially progressive" companies formed as for-profits.
If the traditional sources of funding for both the non-profit and private sector began to dedicate even a small fraction of their vast holdings to social innovators, regardless of the legal designation of their enterprises, we might be forced to come up with a whole new definition of "shareholder value" and a new name for these "hybrid" endeavors.
Do well and do good may never have been mutally exclusive but we may very be at a "tipping point" at the interection of business and societal impact where only the savviest entrepreneurs need apply.
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