About the Center

We launch leaders who launch social ventures.

We believe that many of the most urgent problems facing communities and the world can and will be solved by social entrepreneurs.  Social entrepreneurs can come from any background, study any academic discipline, and work in very different ways on very different challenges, but they share in common:

• The ability to lead, articulate a vision and direction, and motivate others to actualize it;
• An ethic of service, with a commitment to achieve impact greater than the resources put in;
• The drive to create, grow, stabilize, and sustain their efforts at maximum efficiency;
• The wisdom to partner across economic sectors, applying skills, strategies and lessons that surmount barriers between public, private, social and academic sectors.
• The Center leverages the bounty of leadership in the Greater Washington, D.C. region and the commitment to innovation and excellence at George Mason University to create a home where emerging social entrepreneurs can transform:

The Mason Center for Social Entrepreneurship identifies, prepares, and empowers the next generation of social entrepreneurs.  Our role is to:

• Leverage the formative years of the university experience to connect emerging social entrepreneurs to one another and to their peers at other institutions and organizations;
• Inspire student leaders-- from every discipline of study and career path-- to channel their talents and passions into the work of social entrepreneurship;
• Create and nurture intensive, cohort-based, cross-disciplinary educational spaces that link theory and research with practical and applied learning that benefits real people in real communities;
• Mobilize a vital network of mentors, role models, educators and current social entrepreneurs from all sectors to support and extend the work of future social entrepreneurs; and,
• Connect emerging social entrepreneurs to their communities of interest and/or their communities of origin in mutually beneficial and sustainable ways.

 We accomplish this through several programs and initiatives.