Social enterprise has a lengthy private history, but a short public one. Nonprofit organizations have
long engaged in income generation and businesses to either supplement or complement their mission
activities.3 In the United Kingdom, cooperatives functioned as a means to fund socioeconomic agendas
as early as the mid-1800s. Beginning in the 1960s, US nonprofits experimented with enterprises to
create jobs for disadvantaged populations. Micro-credit organizations made their appearance in
developing countries by the 1970s, at about the same time Community Development Corporations
(CDCs) were gaining popularity in the United States. Yet it is only in the last 15 or 20 years that
academics, practitioners, and donors have been studying and recording cases of nonprofits adopting
market-based approaches to achieve their missions.