When Jan Levy started his MBA at IESE Business School in Spain he had just sold his thriving dot-com business StudentPages to a leading publisher. Already an accomplished entrepreneur, he might easily have followed the well-trodden MBA path to a highly-paid career in management consulting. Or built another business from scratch. He didn’t.

Instead Levy did charitable work at an orphanage in Bolivia. When he graduated he started work in Islington, North London, for Business in the Community, a charity aiming to “create a public benefit by working with companies to improve the positive impact of business in society”.

Eighteen months later he is still there. Why the not-for-profit sector? “Because you get more satisfaction that what you are doing is worthwhile,” Levy says.

Increasingly MBA students are broadening their perspectives and considering social entrepreneurship as a career option. One reason for this is a change in career patterns. Non-profit work is no longer seen as a semi-retirement option.

“It’s seen as part of the move to having a portfolio career,” says David Molian, lecturer in Enterprise at Cranfield School of Management. “People see that working in social business is something you can do mid-career and which you can come into and go out of.”

Beth Anderson, managing director at the Centre of the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at the Fuqua School of Business in the US, believes that the blurring of the boundaries between non-profit, government and traditional business partly explains MBA students’ interest in social entrepreneurship.

“Some social sector leaders are adopting and adapting many of the tools of business and entrepreneurship to find more effective and sustainable solutions to social problems,” Anderson says.

“Young professionals looking to have an impact on the field are pursuing MBAs to sharpen management skills and build their professional networks.”

Ben Brabyn, an alumnus of Warwick Business School who completed his full-time MBA in 2001, is a good example. He is managing director of Bmycharity.com, a company that helps UK charities harness the fundraising power of the internet. Brabyn founded Bmycharity.com in 2000 after a stint in investment banking proved unfulfilling. “I was keen to make a social contribution,” Brabyn says.

Recent corporate fraud may also be why MBA students are turning to social enterprise. “Scandals created by top executives have damaged top managers as role models,” says Johanna Mair, of the IESE Business School. “That has made the corporate positions less attractive and provoked a shift in values.”

Business school activity confirms that social entrepreneur- ship is a hot topic. London Business School (LBS) recently added a social option to its entrepreneurship courses for MBA students. The school is also partnering Goldman Sachs and US business schools, Columbia and Haas, to organise the Global Social Venture competition. The 2004 awards will be held at LBS.

At the Cranfield School of Management, where social entrepreneurship is studied as part of general entrepreneurship, the possibility of a stand alone elective is “under discussion”. The school has introduced its first social entrepreneurship case study. Cranfield has also announced that, with the Cranfield Trust charity, it will offer two MBA scholarships to people in the voluntary sector. The scholarships cover tuition fees (£32,000 over two years) for the part-time or modular Executive MBA. Harvard Business School offers what is possibly the longest running course on social entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector. Another US school which is strong in the subject is the Fuqua Business School at Duke University. It opened its Center for the Advancement for Social Entrepreneurship last autumn. Professor Greg Dees, faculty director, is an expert in the field. Before joining Fuqua, he pioneered and taught the Harvard Business School course and helped found Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation.

The increase in interest in social entrepreneurship is reflected by the involvement of many business schools with the non-profit sector. In June, the Open University Business School (OUBS) announced an appeal to raise money for Education Africa, a charity based in Johannesburg. The OUBS became involved with the charity when in 2002 its staff, on a trip to to attend the first OUBS graduation ceremony in South Africa, visited a Soweto township. The OUBS has pledged £25,000 to build a new classroom at the charity’s school, Masibambane College, south of Johannesburg at Orange Farm, the biggest and one of the poorest settlements in the country.

Through the Association of Business Schools, more than 15 English schools are involved in the New Entrepreneur Scholarships (NES) programme. This is designed to help people living in disadvantaged areas of England to overcome barriers to help them transform ideas into successful businesses. More than 800 scholars were accepted on the pilot programme in 2001, creating 300 new businesses.

Ashridge business school recently announced a new initiative called MBAid. The project, to start next summer, brings the expert knowledge of Ashridge MBAs, past and present, to the non-profit sector. “We want to share some of our expertise,” says Rob Peach, chairman of Ashridge MBA Alumni Association. “MBAid Project has been designed for our MBAs to help voluntary organisations with strategic, operational and business issues.”

With business schools bringing know-how to social enterprise and more MBA students turning to social entrepreneurship, the interests of the non-profit sector will be well-served. Professor Mair says: “Doing well does not exclude doing good.”