Finding New Ways to Understand and Teach Entrepreneurship in the Nonprofit Sector: Introducing the Nonprofit Entrepreneurship Tree

As the social entrepreneurship concept continues to gain public recognition and momentum, it also generates a growing demand among college students for nonprofit entrepreneurship educational opportunities. However, the core features of the concept are poorly understood. Critical aspects remain poorly defined and the relationship between social entrepreneurship and other fields of study continues to be rather fuzzy. This paper approaches social entrepreneurship from the perspective of the study of nonprofits. By combining insights from the entrepreneurship and non-profit literature, a tool is introduced for nonprofit educators, students, and practitioners to approach and discuss nonprofit entrepreneurship in a new way. Using four central features, the nonprofit's mission, the entrepreneurial opportunities, the organizational capacity, and the human competence, the tool provides a way to address entrepreneurship in a nonprofit organizational setting by centering on the entrepreneurial space these features can generate.