The Center was launched in April 2011 to unify pre-existing programming by Mason and by the formerly independent nonprofit, the Phoenix Project, which had been in operation since January of 2006.

Thus, as of Spring, 2012, we have:

• Run six (6) iterations of the Social Innovation Program, an annual, six-week, summer academic and experiential leadership development institute for 25-30 top students—undergraduates or recent graduates—admitted from a competitive global pool of applicants.

• Hosted four (4) iterations of the Accelerating Social Entrepreneurship Conference, a gathering of hundreds of leaders from all sectors to discuss strategies for advancing the social enterprise movement regionally, nationally, and globally.

• Launched a Masters Degree Program in Social Entrepreneurship.

• Modeled (3) groundbreaking partnerships between severely economically distressed communities and leaders from forty (40) institutions of higher education using social enterprise-focused capacity-building strategies to help the communities recover while advancing teaching and learning of next generation social entrepreneurs.

• Launched web-based technologies, like AVAIL to better facilitate university-community collaboration around social entrepreneurship, providing students with essential real-world learning experiences and providing community organizations with crucial assistance in delivering their service

• Provided professional consulting services to more than 200 community-based organizations and municipal agencies seeking to grow their impact through sustainable business practices.

• Published numerous news articles, journals, books, and made numerous appearances as speakers and panelists at conferences, in classrooms, and on television, radio, and the web related to social entrepreneurship and training the next generation of change-makers.

• Organized visits by leading thinkers and practitioners to campus to convey their knowledge and experiences related to the social entrepreneurship and presented the three (3) Social Innovation Champion Awards.

• Launched StartUp Mason as a lean business-planning incubator.

• Been recognized as an AshokaU Changemaker Campus and received the Virginia Governor’s Award for Community Service.