Tonight marks the airdate of the PBS documentary “The New Recruits” about the Acumen Fellows program.   The one-hour film tells the story of three Acumen Fellows who are working to bring a new approach to tackling poverty through business. Funded by the PBS Social Entrepreneurship Fund, which was created through a grant from the Skoll Foundation, the [...]

There’s a good story in Time Magazine about growing consumer awareness around how consumption choices impact the environment, workers and other social issues.   “We are again entering a period of social change as Americans are recalibrating our sense of what it means to be a citizen, not just through voting or volunteering but also through [...]

The Skoll Foundation launched this week a pilot of the Pulse system for measuring social impact.  Pulse has been developed by Acumen Fund and Salesforce.com, with the support of Exponent Partners and funding from Skoll,  the Lodestar Foundation and others. The aim of Pulse is to provide a consistent, systematic way to measure social impact across different [...]

There are a couple of interesting news items out involving Skoll ecosystem partners.   Nick Kristof of the New York Times writes about Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of the Acumen Fund, a Skoll partner.  Kristof has just read an advance copy of Novogratz’s upcoming book, The Blue Sweater, and his column talks about the challenges she’s faced [...]

The latest edition of Fast Company magazine reports on their Social Enterprises of the Year.  Among the “top 10″ identified by Fast Company are three with Skoll Foundation connections:  Institute for One World Health, whose founder, Victoria Hale, is a 2005 Skoll social entrepreneur, and Skoll ecosystem partners Acumen Fund and Civic Ventures.  Each is [...]

Sam Goldman, the founder of d.light design and a blogger on Social Edge, has just landed $6 million in investment funding for his initiative to deliver solar powered LED lights to replace kerosene lanterns in developing countries.  d.light design has an ambitious goal:  to be the leading player in off-grid [...]

There are a couple of innovative fundraising initiatives involving Skoll social entrepreneurs that have come to our attention in recent weeks.  One has pretty high visibility, thanks to an aggressive advertising campaign by American Express.  It’s the American Express Members Project.  American Express is committing $2.5 million to the top five projects voted on by [...]