The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the collective dynamics of commitment that underlie the survival of social ventures. We argue that the traditional individual/project nexus – associating business survival to individual persistenceis insufficient to account for the complexity of social entrepreneurship. Instead, we propose the concept of ‘collective persistence’ which emerges from the interaction of founders’ commitment profiles as they combine and evolve over time. Through a qualitative longitudinal study conducted on two emerging social ventures, we show that this collective persistence is shaped by the interplay between individual dynamics of commitment and decommitment, as well as by four collective dynamics of commitment: contagion, dilution, resonance, and transfer. Our research contributes to both social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial persistence literature by offering a more nuanced and collective perspective on the development of new social venture facing precarious conditions.