Claire and David argue in Daughters of the Declaration: How Women Social Entrepreneurs Built the American Dream (Public Affairs Press, 2011) that a set of exceptional, entrepreneurial women created America’s not-for-profit sector, using the same strategies and tactics that early capitalists deployed in creating the Industrial Revolution.

Distinguished scholar and civic leader Claire Gaudiani calls these women “social entrepreneurs,” arguing that they brought the same drive and strategic intent to their pursuit of “the greater good” that their male counterparts applied to building the nation’s capital markets throughout the nineteenth century. Gaudiani tells the stories of these patriotic women, and their creation of America’s unique not-for-profit, or “social profit” sector. She concludes that the idealism and optimism inherent in this work provided an important asset to the increasing prosperity of the nation from its founding to the Second World War. Social entrepreneurs have defined a system of governance “by the people,” and they remain our best hope for continued moral leadership in the world.