Few Georgetown programs capture the spirit of the school as perfectly as the Compass Fellows program. The fellows, a group of 30 freshmen and sophomores who each create a socially conscious business, are determined to be successful while following the Jesuit ideal of men and women for others. But oddly enough, this quintessentially Georgetown program operates without much institutional support from the school.
Georgetown could become the top school for aspiring social entrepreneurs. The school’s lone social entrepreneurship class, which Neil Shah (MSB ’10) said gave him the idea for Compass Partners, is at capacity again this spring—clearly, the enthusiasm for this subject and the demand for more instruction exists among Georgetown students. But a lack of support for aspiring social entrepreneurs was actually what pushed Shah and Arthur Woods (MSB ’10) to create Compass Partners in 2008 while sophomores at Georgetown. Both had tried to create socially conscious businesses as freshmen but failed after struggling to find the guidance and support they needed to get their ideas off the ground.
Georgetown can do more to promote social entrepreneurship on campus than just offering a course on the subject. Class offerings for social entrepreneurship and related subjects should be expanded to meet student demand for such programs, and more students should be permitted to take relevant courses; Compass Fellows who were not in the McDonough School of Business have pointed out that restrictions often prevent them from taking business-oriented classes. The Compass Fellows program cannot indefinitely rely on the Prudential Foundation funding that helped it launch in 2009. Georgetown should commit to financially supporting the program, which requires less than $6,000 a year, as George Washington University has done.
The efforts of the Compass Fellows, the social consciousness of its students, and its Jesuit ideals make Georgetown a unique place to pursue the idea of social entrepreneurship. It is no accident that Compass Fellows was the brainchild of Georgetown students. But to sustain this community, the University needs to do what it can to support the fellows and social entrepreneurs on campus.
