MBA alum and former Dingman Scholar Matt Fleischer put passion into promise to create a successful beer company Zoey Rawlins, founder of Shop DC and former Dingman Scholar, launched her business by following trends in the marketplace Run by students, The Smith Store offers promotional branded apparel, accessories and gifts The Dingman Center supports entrepreneurs throughout the Washington D.C. Metro Area and beyond The Dingman Center is located at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland

Social Venturing

Business Best Practices that Better the World

Overview  ♦  Non-Profit Partnerships  ♦  Investing ♦  Case Studies

"The Social Ventures program has helped Generations Community Development Corporation build an infrastructure to track and monitor our clientele and staff electronically. Electronic files help create a green environment that saves time, space and money. Additionally, we are able to evaluate our effectiveness, project outcomes for the future and create needed reports for our funders."

- Deborah Young, director

Generations Community Development Corporation

The nexus between businesses and non-profit organizations is becoming increasingly important to both sides. Non-profits seek self-sufficiency through the creation of income streams, while for-profit business professionals want to increase their socially conscious practices. The Dingman Center is on the cutting edge of this trend, offering an array of programs that benefit the public and private sectors, our students, and the broader community.

Public and private interests dovetail through the Center’s Biodiesel University, a mobile education lab that demonstrates how oil-bearing plants can be used to create clean-burning renewable fuel. More recently, the Center has launched a consulting partnership with Grassroots.org, a national organization providing free online services to over 1,000 non-profits in the US, to harness the social entrepreneur expertise and enthusiasm of Dingman Center students to benefit nonprofit organizations.

Consulting Projects

The Dingman Center opened its Mentor Program as a service partner to selected non-profit members of Grassroots.org. Nonprofits apply to participate in the program and receive expert guidance from the Dingman Center and Smith MBA students during each semester.

Projects are designed for 60-90 full-time equivalents (FTEs) over 3 months to address issues —whether financial, marketing, operational, organizational or strategic— and to develop the necessary steps to solve the problems and improve the business. We encourage (but do not limit) applying nonprofits to utilize the students’ social entrepreneur skills to develop fee for service business plans resulting in a diversified funding stream for the nonprofit.

Since Fall 2006, 40 MBA full-time and part-time students have serviced 19 non-profits with projects ranging from marketing plans to building databases from scratch. For more information, please read our case studies.