The Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship
Presented by the Skoll Foundation: ‘Bet on People Doing Good Things’
One day when Jeff Skoll was in high school in Toronto, pumping gas to save money for college, his father came home and announced he had cancer. The prognosis was bad. “It’s not so much that I’m afraid to die,” he said. “But I’m afraid I haven’t done the things I wanted to with my life.”
Skoll took his father’s words as a wake-up call and became determined to lead a purpose-driven life. In business school he explored how entrepreneurship could become a powerful force to impact the world. Fast forward to 1998 when Skoll is the president of a once-fledgling online auction service, eBay: When the company went public, he became a billionaire overnight. By the age of 33, Skoll had the resources to become a major philanthropist.
He launched the Skoll Foundation in 1999 to pursue his vision of a sustainable world of peace and prosperity — a vision that had begun to form even in adolescence. As the foundation established its priorities, Sally Osberg, its CEO since 2001, introduced Skoll to her mentor, John W. Gardner. He was the secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson and an architect of the Great Society of the 1960s. Skoll asked Gardner what he could do to make a difference in the world. “Bet on good people doing good things,” Gardner said.
Since then, the Skoll Foundation has invested approximately $400 million to help solve the world’s most pressing problems, particularly in the areas of health, education, environmental sustainability, economic opportunity, sustainable markets, peace and human rights.
“Our goal is to get to the heart of an injustice, something that is clearly not working for humanity or the planet,” explains Jude O’Reilley, senior director for the Skoll Awards program. “We do that by investing in social entrepreneurs who have proven that they can change a system.”
Each awardee receives a $1.25 million, three-year investment to advance their work and increase their impact in the world. They also gain leverage through their long-term participation in a global community of visionary leaders and innovators dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing problems.
“The Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship is a signature program of the foundation,” says Osberg. “We initiated the awards in 2005, and this year we will introduce our 13th cohort of awardees, bringing the total portfolio to more than 120 leading change agents with proven impact on some of the world’s most pressing problems.”
The Foundation presents the Skoll Awards at the annual Skoll World Forum, held at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School in Oxford, England. This year’s Forum (April 4–7, 2017) gathers thought leaders, innovators, and artists from around the globe to exchange ideas, attend sessions, and celebrate innovation. (Watch the 2017 social entrpreneurs accept their awards on Wednesday, April 5, at 4 p.m. GMT+1 at skoll.org/live.)
True to Jeff Skoll’s vision, one of the Skoll Foundation’s core strengths is storytelling, distilling the important systems-changing work of social entrepreneurs so that practitioners and partners across sectors can learn from and help support solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Through a partnership they’ve established with the Sundance Institute, awardees are paired with a filmmaker or producer. This storytelling collaboration often has an immediate impact on an awardee’s ability to reach new audiences, funders and supporters. Occasionally, it leads to a full-length documentary such as “Bending the Arc,” about the groundbreaking work of Partners in Health, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this year.
The path to a Skoll Award involves testing models to address social problems and advancing them to the point where they have both a demonstrable effect on the problem as well as a steady stream of referrals from a network of experts. “There’s a heat map that an organization establishes over time,” says O’Reilley. “Each substantive step they take in the world leaves an indelible mark with communities, partners, policymakers and other experts close to the work.”
Like the portfolio the foundation supports, the 2017 Skoll awardees are transformative leaders whose organizations are disrupting the status quo and driving large-scale change — poised to create even greater impact on the world:
Kola Masha and his for-profit farm cooperative model, Babban Gona, have helped thousands of Nigerian youth to profitably work small farms and significantly improve their families’ livelihoods.
Elizabeth Hausler of Build Change enables communities to reduce the effects of natural disaster and transforms how populations in the developing world rebuild homes, improving safety and providing jobs to local builders.
Dr. Raj Panjabi’s team at Last Mile Health delivers health care to Liberia’s most remote citizens and partners with the government to ensure their model for community-based health workers expands across the nation.
Brad Myles and Polaris are centralizing human trafficking information collected across issues and geographies to ensure that modern-day slavery is no longer a low-risk, high-profit crime.
The 2017 Skoll awardees are the very “good people, doing good things” that Gardner exhorted Skoll and Osberg to bet on. They are visionary disrupters making the world safer and more equitable for the most vulnerable and marginalized populations.
“These social entrepreneurs understand that human dignity depends on the security of meeting basic needs: health, food, shelter and safety,” Osberg says, “Only then can all people achieve their full potential.”
For more information visit skoll.org. Watch the 2017 social entrepreneurs accept their Skoll Awards on Wednesday, April 5, at 4 p.m. GMT+1 at skoll.org/live.
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
