Common Good Solutions has been helping the region’s social entrepreneurs since 2012. Now the Halifax-based mentoring and consulting company is pushing ahead with marketing its online training platform for social entrepreneurs, before others emulate the idea.

CGS started its Social Enterprise Institute (SEI) platform in March last year and later introduced it to the world at the Social Enterprise World Forum in New Zealand.

SEI chief operating officer Stephanie Pronk said running a social venture — one that prioritizes people and the planet as well as profit — is particularly challenging.

“Social entrepreneurs are trying to sell, just like any other business, and do the social aspect, which is hard,” Pronk said.

CGS decided to create their online training tool after realizing there were many groups looking for help that couldn’t get what they needed due to budget and time commitments. CGS decided that online training would be especially useful for social entrepreneurs in rural areas and developing countries.

Pronk believes the SEI is the first site in the world that provides action-based modular content — information accessible on demand for particular problems — for social entrepreneurs.

So far, entrepreneurs have shown the most interest in courses about social procurement (selling to government and bigger corporations) and measuring the social impact of work. Sales training and marketing are also popular, and the staff are currently expanding their sales content.

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Curriculum is being developed with help from all over Canada and the U.K. The latter is further ahead in social enterprise development, especially in Scotland, Pronk said.

The creators hope the online learning tool will lift people around the world out of poverty by enabling them to grow their own social ventures. They’re aiming for the tool to help bring a million people out of poverty by supporting 100,000 users globally by 2030.

“Although a great deal of progress has been made in alleviating poverty in the last 70 years, in 2013 there were still 2 billion people living on less than US$3.20 a day,” Pronk said.

“In developing countries, internet connectedness is growing. We felt this could provide a better way for organizations to access this assistance.”

Now they need to get the site established before the idea is copied. In the last year they’ve hired a team to push it forward and now have five full-time staff focused on SEI who, incidentally, are all aged under 30.

“We have IT and marketing expertise. Now it’s a race to market,” Pronk said.

Use of the site is being fuelled by the fact that CGS’s existing partners in the U.K. and Canada — groups like Momentum in Calgary, the Canada Business Network, and the University of New Brunswick — are buying content.

Pronk said these partnerships are key to the success of the site.

“Our partners have deep networks in their communities and we can augment the training they offer. It helps us expand our impact.”

The site has users in 14 countries and offers more than 60 courses as well as help from expert coaches. So far the site has received 3,400 course enrolments. Novice entrepreneurs can often obtain free training through sponsoring organizations.

Pronk said the site is also acquiring users through word of mouth.

“The site has had international exposure through our work in Scotland and New Zealand. And around the world people are searching online for training in social entrepreneurship and happening upon our site.”

Globally, there is more and more interest in social entrepreneurship, she said.

“Our research shows that social ventures are finding more customers, and governments at all levels are increasingly keen to support and buy from social ventures.

“I hope the site inspires people to see that social entrepreneurship is a great tool to make change in the world.”