Knowledge Items
Scaling Social Impact
By J. Gregory Dees, Beth Battle Anderson and Jane Wei-Skillern Arguing that social entrepreneurs have commonly sought to spread or “scale out” their innovations by replicating or “scaling up” their organizations, this article offers a framework for a larger set of pathways from which to choose. The authors encourage social entrepreneurs to consider different ways […]
Access, Common Agency, and Board Size
By Rajesh K. Aggarwal and Dhananjay Nanda We study the impact of the size of a firm’s board of directors on managerial incentives and firm performance. We present a model where a risk-averse agent (the top management team) performs multiple tasks for a firm that is controlled by multiple principals (the board of directors) who differ […]
Scaling Social Impact: Strategies for Spreading Social Innovations
By J. Gregory Dees, Beth Battle Anderson and Jane Wei-Skillern How can social entrepreneurs effectively scale their impact to reach the many people and communities that could benefit from their innovations? As policy expert and author Lisbeth Schorr observed: “We have learned to create the small exceptions that can change the lives of hundreds. But […]
Putting Nonprofit Business Ventures in Perspective
By J. Gregory Dees In the lead chapter in a “how-to” manual for social enterprise produced by the Yale-Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures, Greg Dees lays out cautionary words about the challenges, costs, and risks associated with nonprofit business ventures and provides careful guidance on writing and implementing a business plan for a […]
Sector Bending: Blurring the Lines between Nonprofit and For-Profit
By J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson Traditional sector boundaries are increasingly breaking down. On small and large scales, for-profits and nonprofits are moving into new territories and exploring uncharted waters. While this kind of sector-bending is not entirely new–remember Goodwill Industries or Girl Scouts Cookies–it is certainly growing in popularity. Increasingly we are […]
Latino Community Credit Union
By Victor Abad and Adam Elboim Through a unique partnership of the grassroots organization El Centro Hispano, the NC State Employees’ Credit Union, Self-Help Credit Union and the NC Minority Support Center, the Latino Community Credit Union was chartered in February 2000 by the state of North Carolina. With the goal of providing affordable, accessible, […]
The Growth of YouthBuild: A Case Study
By Ayse Guclu, J. Gregory Dees and Beth Battle Anderson From its roots in 1978 as a project of the Youth Action Program in East Harlem, by early 2003, the YouthBuild movement had grown to encompass a network of over 200 local sites nationwide. We selected YouthBuild because it raises crucial strategic questions that will […]
Nonprofit Geographic Expansion: Branches, Affiliates, or Both?
By Jane Wei-Skillern and Beth Battle Anderson Nonprofit organizations often move into new territories by establishing local branches, affiliates, or a combination of branches and affiliates, resulting in a plural form. This paper presents data from a survey of U.S. nonprofit leaders who have experience with or are considering expanding their organizations via branches, affiliates, […]
RISE Capital Market Report: The Double Bottom Line Private Equity Landscape in 2002/2003
By Cathy Clark and Josie Taylor Gaillard This snapshot of the emerging DBL investor landscape reveals a colorful cadre of investors going about their work in myriad ways. Our research shows that the group of DBL funds is broader in industry scope and deeper in each social or environmental focus than either we, or our […]
RISE Social Venture Rubric: A Diagnostic Tool
By Cathy Clark The RISE Social Venture Rubric is a diagnostic tool that was developed at Columbia Business School to aid the in-class evaluation of social ventures. It was designed to stimulate for discussion and to help a student, entrepreneur, investor or consultant identify points of relative strength or weaknesses of a social venture. Research […]