Education for today’s social impact entrepreneurs.

This module guides you to articulate your venture's vision, mission, and strategy. These foundational elements shape your organization's DNA, guiding daily decisions and long-term planning, and are integral to your brand identity and communication.

Learning Objectives:

• Mission, Vision, and Strategies

• Logic Models

• Iteration

This module helps you validate your business idea by defining customer types and understanding your value to them. Use tools like the Customer Research Worksheet and Value Proposition Canvas to refine your product based on real feedback and achieve a product-solution fit.

Learning Objectives:

• Value Propositions

• Target Customer

This module introduces you to business model design and the Business Model Canvas. You'll draft a concise model, understand your industry's landscape, refine your value proposition, and learn customer engagement strategies for near-term growth.

Learning Objectives:

• Business Model Design

• Business Model Canvas

This module focuses on refining your Business Model Canvas. You'll validate your assumptions through extensive feedback and customer conversations. This process, though challenging, is vital for gathering essential information and refining your venture for success.

Learning Objectives:

• How to test your hypotheses and assumptions

• Lean Experimentation and Minimal Viable Products

• Live Prototyping

This module covers essential financial principles for social enterprises. Learn to build a sustainable financial model, understand cost structures, revenue streams, and cash flow. This lays the foundation for managing finances and driving impact.

Learning Objectives:

• Expense Forecasting

• Foundational Concepts of Operational Finance

• Pricing Models

This module helps you refine your financial model with key projections: pricing, sales forecasts, impact, break-even points, and ROI. Use estimates and research to project future performance and adjust as you gather real data.

Learning Objectives:

• Differences between Financial Management and Financial Leadership

• Financial Dashboard

This module guides you in using your financial model to make informed choices about staffing, pricing, marketing, and more. Learn tools for financial decision-making and use estimates from previous modules to set realistic goals and strategies.

Learning Objectives:

• Financial Statements - Budget v. actual, Profit & Loss, Pro Forma

• Staffing, Budgeting, Operations

This module emphasizes the role of leading with financial insight. It covers setting financial goals, ensuring sustainability, and managing risk. Learn to balance mission + money, and practice transparency to lead effectively.

Learning Objectives:

• Financial Goal Setting

• Sustainability

This module encourages reviewing and refining your work from the previous modules. Use your accumulated knowledge to improve your mission, vision, strategy, and business model for sustainability and effectiveness while identifying near-term challenges.

Learning Objectives:

• Refine existing Mission, Vision, and Strategy

• Refine existing Business Model

• Identify most significant, near-term vulnerabilities

This module teaches you to select and track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your social enterprise. By building a KPI dashboard, you'll monitor progress, communicate impact, and ensure alignment with your mission, vision, and values while overcoming common measurement barriers.

Learning Objectives:

• Align impact and organizational health metrics to logic model

• Express how dashboards drive product/service innovation

This module enhances your pitching and storytelling skills. Effective storytelling is key to shaping culture, attracting support, and securing funding. Learn to engage stakeholders and customers, fostering growth through compelling narratives.

Learning Objectives:

• Practice effective and impactful public speaking skills

• Revise your story and pitch

This module helps you define your brand identity and voice. Learn to communicate your unique value, develop a marketing plan, and build brand recognition and loyalty. Engage stakeholders through compelling, consistent communications.

Learning Objectives:

• Discern how and why others evaluate brand performance

• Develop an effective communications strategy

This module explores social venture finance, including funding options like donations, grants, and equity. It covers fundraising strategies, ethical considerations, and financial tools such as impact investing and social impact bonds.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how and why others have used fundraising strategies

• Grasp how the spectrum of funding sources aligns with your mission, vision, and impact

This module explores building and leveraging partnerships for social ventures. Learn to identify, map, and prioritize partnerships that provide critical resources, capabilities, and support for scaling and growing your enterprise.

Learning Objectives:

• Visualize how and why others have used Partnership Mapping

• Articulate and mitigate challenges and risks of partnerships