Abstract
Social entrepreneurship [SE] is one genre of entrepreneurship which has the potential to address the operational and financial sustainability challenges experienced by NPOs as a means of enabling sustainable social impact. As an evolving field of study built on practitioners’ works, SE suffers from definitional ambiguities. The comparative analysis between the four schools of thought on SE resulted in the acceptance of EMES schools of thought on SE, such as being most aligned to entrepreneurship. The literature is relatively silent on the importance of NPOs’ operational sustainability, focusing on NPOs’ financial sustainability and social impact; an incomplete coverage of NPOs’ sustainability. Entrepreneurial actions, supported by business management, financial and accountability strategies, i.e. SE strategies, result in NPOs’ operational and financial sustainability, enabling sustainable social value creation or social impact—the central premise of SE. While the examination of the literature on SE in practice supported this position, operating business-like is a novel concept for NPOs; thus, this chapter detailed the SE strategies and associated operating practices as a guide for NPOs’ actions.