Although behaving entrepreneurially has become increasingly important for many nonprofit organizations, research on entrepreneurial orientation (EO) lacks a clear understanding of the construct in the nonprofit context. This study examines how EO is shaped on the organizational level of a nonprofit organization and contributes to the creation of a social venture. With a qualitative research design, we explore the role of entrepreneurial elements manifested in the pre-start-up phase of social venture creation according to their importance for upstream and downstream processes. Our findings show how risk taking has a financial and a social dimension and we identify collaboration as a pivotal additional element for social EO along with proactiveness and innovativeness.