RISE Social Venture Rubric A Diagnostic Tool（一）.pdfVIP

1 RISE Social Venture Rubric: A Diagnostic Tool What is the RISE Social Venture Rubric? The RISE Social Venture Rubric is a diagnostic tool that was developed at Columbia Business School to aid the in-class evaluation of social ventures. It was designed to stimulate for discussion and to help a student, entrepreneur, investor or consultant identify points of relative strength or weaknesses of a social venture. At Columbia, we define a social venture as a nonprofit or for-profit venture that explicitly aims to achieve two kinds of returns: financial return through earned income or revenue, and social returns by creating tangible positive impact on society at large. RISE publishes case studies for use at Columbia as well as by other MBA programs, and many of these cases use the RISE Rubric as a preliminary diagnostic tool. Why is there a need for a diagnostic tool? Social ventures are by their very nature complex undertakings. It is hard enough to create a new company that can identify a new market need and serve it while building infrastructure, raising capital and meeting customer demands all in careful synchrony with the growth of its income. Social ventures aim to do all of this as well as another daunting task – creating value for society beyond the financial bottom line. For example, charter school ventures aim to improve education, community development ventures aim to create jobs and long-lasting skills in economically depressed areas, and alternative energy companies aim to prove more efficient and effective use of natural materials in the production of power. We believe that given the diverse goals of social ventures, management and investors must identify some ways to align values and priorities in order to come to agreement about strategies and solutions to everyday operational issues. The Rubric is one possible diagnostic tool to begin that discussion and can also be used throughout the lifecycle of the v