The Skoll Scholarship for social entrepreneurs

Application Deadline: 13 March 2015

The Skoll Scholarship is a competitive scholarship for incoming MBA students who pursue entrepreneurial solutions for urgent social and environmental challenges. The Scholarship provides funding and exclusive opportunities to meet with world-renowned entrepreneurs, thought-leaders and investors. Once selected, these students are known as Skoll Skollars.

The Skoll Scholarship provides tuition for entrepreneurs who have set up or have been working in entrepreneurial ventures with a social purpose, and who wish to improve their knowledge of market-oriented practices so they can be more effective in their subsequent social change pursuits.

The Scholarship is given in recognition that the MBA may represent a significant financial burden, particularly for those who have chosen to work in social ventures rather than the commercial or public sectors.

Eligibility Criteria:

To be considered, you need to meet the following criteria:

1. Candidates must  have started and grown a social venture that has been running for at least 12 months OR they have been responsible for leading a major expansion of an existing social venture or programme within that venture.

2. Candidates must demonstrate evidence of personal qualities strongly resonating with social entrepreneurial leadership, and illustrate how these have influenced their career path thus far. These qualities include:

• Single-mindedness and persistence in pursuit of a social/environmental benefit goal, including a willingness to face failure and start again
• A bias towards action rather than reflection
• A tendency to explore the environment for opportunities and resources
• A willingness to take personal, and sometimes financial, risks
• A habit of developing a network and drawing upon its members to pursue mutual goals.

3. Candidates must demonstrate how a business education can contribute to the wider development of the community within which they work. They will need to illustrate why a business degree at this stage of their career trajectory can help them amplify their impact.

4. Candidates must demonstrate some evidence of their need for the Scholarship. This may be exhibited, for example, in previous work experiences or personal backgrounds which make self-funding the MBA a significant financial burden.

Scholarship Worth: