Outline of the study

This paper explores how social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial philanthropy can contribute to evidence-based approaches in addressing homelessness. The paper presents a typology setting out six ways in which social entrepreneurship can function in the homelessness field. The author examines the potential of these approaches to drive innovation and long-term solutions, whilst acknowledging significant concerns around power, accountability, and rigour.

Findings in brief
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• Traditional approaches to addressing social problems face specific barriers to innovation, including government risk aversion, market under-supply of social innovation, and charity focus on remedies rather than solutions
  
  
• Social entrepreneurship combines social purpose with commercial entrepreneurial behaviours to create social value and disrupt ’unjust equilibriums’
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• Five key processes characterise social entrepreneurship: opportunity identification, resource mobilisation, intervention design, organisational construction, and scaling for impact
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• ‍The combination of entrepreneurial philanthropy and social entrepreneurship provides risk-tolerant funding and impact-focused resources,with freedom from electoral cycles and profit pressures, enabling innovation for public benefit
  
  
• ‍Social entrepreneurship can contribute to homelessness responses across six functions: evidencing systems of injustice, tackling root causes, technological innovation, market development, new organisational forms, and disseminating evidence
   
• There is potential for innovation across multiple functions and multiple levels, thereby contributing to evidence-based innovation‍
  
  
• Too much focus on market approaches can drive out other ways of achieving social change and may not sufficiently consider structural issues. Mission drift is also a risk if commercial objectives override social goals
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• Power dynamics can be problematic with ‘heroic individual’" narratives imposing top-down solutions without lived experience input
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• ‍Rigour and evidence production remain inconsistent across social entrepreneurship initiatives.

Recommendations in brief
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• Consider ethnographic approaches and co-design with people experiencing homelessness to develop local knowledge and understanding of how social structures intersect to affect people’s experiences
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• Consider how to develop mechanisms to devolve power to disadvantaged communities, such as participatory grant-making and trust-based philanthropy
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• Seek to create accountability systems that enable transparency without inhibiting risk-taking
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• Protect against mission drift through emphasis on social objectives in governance and avoiding over-reliance on commercial income
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• Focus on understanding and changing complex social systems rather than just individual-level interventions
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• Support collaborations between multiple actors, rather than isolated entrepreneurs and balance individual entrepreneurship with collective political action for systemic change
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• Incorporate robust impact measurement and evaluation into programme design
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• ‍Combine technological innovation with political action to address structural issues
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• Ensure transparency about successes and failures to enable mutual learning
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• ‍Utilise and develop innovative evaluation processes, such as ‘Lean Data’ for quick but reliable impact measurement of market based social entrepreneurship.

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