Social & Green Entrepreneurship Toolkit

Built on YBI's and members' knowledge and experience on what works and what doesn't work when working with social and green entrepreneurs, this toolkit is aimed at organisations wanting to start or to improve their work with social and green entrepreneurs and can be used by trainers, coaches, and mentors to adapt their existing content and activities to the special needs that social and green entrepreneurs have.

  • Anna Chojnicka 

    Head of Responsible Business - YBI

  • Discussions available

    Share within communities

  • Available in English & Spanish

  • Expected Duration

    2 hours
Tools within this toolkit are protected by Creative Commons licensing. Please check each tool for specific guidance on the applicable rules and permitted use.

What is the Social & Green Toolkit?

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The toolkit is aimed at organisations wanting to start or to improve their work with social and green entrepreneurs and can be used by trainers, coaches, and mentors to adapt their existing content and activities to the special needs that social and green entrepreneurs have. 


You can use as many tools from the toolkit as you want: from picking just one of them to use sporadically, to combining various tools into a training, mentoring or coaching programme. Most tools are valid for both start-ups and existing businesses, but some may be more relevant than others depending on the entrepreneur's stage.

Tools included within this toolkit

Foundations of a Social & Green Entrepreneur 

This tool helps social and green entrepreneurs to identify their personal drivers, skills, and aptitudes for running their businesses, as well as their motivations and the support they can access when facing challenges.

Self-reflection framework

This tool helps entrepreneurs to increase self-awareness by reflecting on an important situation or experience and considering their actions, the consequences, and what they have learned.



Problem Tree

This tool helps social and green entrepreneurs identify the main problem they are aiming to solve, the root causes of that problem, and its consequences.



SDG Impact Wheel

This tool can help social and green entrepreneurs identify which Sustainable Development Goal(s) and target(s) their business is contributing to.

Impact Gap Canvas

This tool can be used by anyone who wants to understand the landscape of a problem, the ecosystem of current solutions, and their possible entry points to add value to the solutions landscape.

Mutation Game

This tool stops social and green entrepreneurs from getting stuck on one idea, and helps them develop innovative thinking that can lead to new ideas and solutions.

Value Proposition Canvas

This tool focuses on understanding beneficiaries' or customers' problems and producing products or services that solve them, creating a distinct value.

Strategy Map

This tool helps social and green entrepreneurs develop a clear, visual guide showing how their enterprise's activities and operations lead to their overall business and impact goals.

Social Business Model Canvas (Version 1)

This tool helps social and green entrepreneurs create a solid business model for their enterprise. It is based on the traditional BMC and includes some additional fields based on the specificities of social and green entrepreneurs.

Social Business Model Canvas (Version 2)

This tool is very similar to the previous one and serves the same purpose, but it contains more additional fields than version 1 and therefore is slightly more comprehensive and complex to fill out.

Assumption Mapper

This tool is designed to help entrepreneurs identify and prioritize their key assumptions about the desirability, viability, and feasibility of their business, products, and/or services

Experiment Card

This tool helps entrepreneurs to set up the experiments that will allow them to validate those assumptions they have previously mapped using the Assumption Mapper.

Assumption Learning Card

This tool can be used to collect learnings from running an experiment, user testing, or solution validation.

Legal Health Check

This tool assists NGOs and social and green enterprises in identifying legal matters relevant to them and spot issues on which legal advice might be needed.

Accessing Finance

This tool helps social and green entrepreneurs understand what financing stage their organsation is at, what type of finance to seek accordingly, and what they need to have in place to access this type of finance.



Theory of Change

This tool is a structured approach to mapping out the steps entrepreneurs need to take to tackle the challenges they have identified. It links the problem they want to solve, their business vision, audience, and the change they want to make.

Logical Framework

This tool gives a detailed description of the entrepreneur's business, showing how the business activities will lead to the immediate outputs, and how these will lead to the outcomes and goals.

Grow Your Business

This tool takes social and green entrepreneurs through a step-by-step process of how to develop and begin implementing a growth strategy.

Developed in Partnership

This toolkit has been developed by YBI in partnership with 9 of its members.

In Phase 1: Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (India), CAP Youth Empowerment Institute (Kenya), Habitat Association (Turkey), ideiaLab (Mozambique), Somo Africa (Kenya), and Youth Business Spain; and in partnership with 5 members.

In Phase 2: CAP Youth Empowerment Institute (Kenya), ideiaLab (Mozambique), Development Solutions Mongolia, Barbados Youth Business Trust and Jinishian Memorial Foundation (Armenia).