Cathy Clark, the author of the Rise Report, who teaches at Duke and at Columbia is building a business model evaluation tool for social entrepreneurs and I am going to help her. It will look at things like tiered pricing (one price in the developing world, another in the first world, and look more broadly at issues like what kinds of subsidies of the social mission a viable social enterprise needs to build into its business model. What subsidies for products, what for services, which kinds of subsidies, how to look for links with branding and mission that ensure good exits, how to use philanthropy as a way to lower the cost of goods, etc.
She will be showing her progress to date at Socap and we will make sure people can give a lot of feedback about it, too, to help refine the tool and add to its usability. I