Gender and social entrepreneurship fundraising: A mission drift perspective

Abstract

An increasing number of entrepreneurs are pursuing social welfare goals using viable revenue-generating business models to sustain operations—a practice known as social entrepreneurship. In this research, we highlight that such a hybrid model of entrepreneurship raises funders’ concerns over mission drift (i.e., entrepreneurs prioritizing financial gain at the expense of social missions) and examine how these concerns create a unique gender disparity in social venture fundraising. Integrating the mission drift literature and social role theory, we posit that female entrepreneurs are better positioned to alleviate funders’ concerns over mission drift as they are perceived as having stronger prosocial motivation. As a result, they will garner more financial support for their early-stage hybrid social ventures relative to their male counterparts. We further propose that this female advantage may diminish when social entrepreneurs have nonprofit work experience that signals their commitment to social missions. Findings from archival field data of 262 social crowdfunding campaigns (Study 1) and two preregistered experiments (Studies 2 and 3) provide rigorous empirical evidence for the proposed gender effect on social entrepreneurial fundraising and its underlying mechanisms. However, the findings on the moderating effects of nonprofit work experience across studies remain inconclusive. This research sheds light on how the hybrid nature of social enterprises recalibrates evaluations and gender dynamics in fundraising, thereby providing a more nuanced understanding of gender and entrepreneurial financing.