Social Venturing: Case Studies

Spring 2008 Projects

In Spring 2008, there were four projects staffed by nine MBA students both full-time and part-time. The following are the organizations that received assistance from the students:

InterConnection: Facilitating access to the Internet to undeserved populations

Since 1999, InterConnection Seattle has worked to facilitate access to the Internet by providing training, low-cost refurbished computers and Internet services to underserved local and global populations. So far the organization has had a successful and sustainable venture with Interconnection Uganda, developing a business model under which refurbished PC’s are shipped to Uganda for final assembly and some software installation.

• Objective: This project aims to develop a packaged framework to determine the feasibility of new resale ventures offshore. The package will include a spreadsheet-based financial model to analyze the main costs of the operation, along with a general guideline to asses the target market and facilitate the establishment of new operations offshore.
• MBA Students: Jorge Diaz, Joshua Israel, Jonathan Hollaway

Slum Doctor Programme: Providing hope, medicine, food, education and dignity to orphans and HIV/AIDS victims in Africa

The Slum Doctor Programme (SDP) is a multi-citizen effort to provide hope, medicine, food, education and dignity to orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa. SDP works to provide emergency medical care in Kenya and help widows in Uganda start their own businesses so they can support their families.

• Objective: The proposed project would involve developing a strategy to market SDP to potential web based donors as well as help develop the skills necessary to develop a interactive relationship to the worldwide AIDS relief community. The project would also require the consultants to develop an action plan as well as an affordable budget for the technological infrastructure necessary to activate the process.
• MBA Students: Aditya Naik and Tinu Ogunde

O.U.R. House of Central Vermont: Providing a safe and supportive environment to assist survivors and families of child sexual abuse

O.U.R. House of Central Vermont is a non-profit organization providing a safe and supportive environment to assist victims, adult survivors and families in the prevention, discovery, intervention, and healing of child sexual abuse. They provide a safe and child-friendly facility where trained police and Vermont Department for Children and Families investigators can interview children to determine if sexual abuse has occurred.

• Objective: The goal for this project is to develop a 3-5 year strategic plan that includes a financial plan. The objective is to improve the consistency of funding from grants, private funding, donations, and fundraising. Part of the financial plan will include planning a budget for the non-profit.
• MBA Students: Christen Hartnett and Greg Miller

Fall 2007 Projects

In Fall 2007, there were eight projects staffed by 16 first year, full-time MBA students. The following are the organizations that received assistance from the students:

• BLOK: BLOK is online organizational tool that received favorable reviews from educators that were surveyed. It has the potential of being a very helpful and useful tool for educators, parents and students trying to organize their academic careers.
• Digital All Systems: Digit All Systems, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation committed to bridging the digital divide and bringing the benefits of expanding technology to everyone. It was founded in September 1998 and has since served more than 435 clients.
• Generations Community Development Corporation: Generations Community Development Corporation is a non-profit that helps deliver job-training and other services to unemployed and underemployed Chicago residents.
• Hiyaah Power: Hiyaah Power is a dynamic online community thatconsists of a network of over40,000 women in 40 states, the UK and Caribbean. It was created to serve as an online conduit of information for women.
• North East Community Center: The NECC is a non-profit social services organization based out of Millerton, NY. They run a variety of programs for toddlers, children and senior citizens, and also get grants from a number of donors.
• Project PLASE: Project PLASE, Inc. addresses homelessness by providing transitional housing, permanent housing and supportive services to homeless adults. They serve the most vulnerable and undeserved, including persons with mental illness, HIV/AIDS, addiction, developmental disabilities, and ex-offenders, etc.
• High Voltage Youth Camp: High Voltage Youth Camp is a non-profit organization that provides educational as well as recreational programs for economically disadvantaged youth, ages 14-19, to realize their potential, build character, and to function effectively as contributing members of society.

Projects in Focus:

Generations Community Development Corporation:

Written by Brian Gottlieb

On January 22 and 23, Aditya Betala and Brian Gottlieb braved two freezing days in the windy city in order to fulfill the duties of their Fall 2008 Social Venturing project. This project was due to the generosity of Michael Mann, founder of Grassroots.org. Up until this point, their project contact, Deborah Young, was only a kindly voice on the phone and they were anxious to meet her in person. Deborah is the director of the Generations Community Development Coporation, a non-profit that helps deliver job-training and other services to unemployed and underemployed Chicago residents. The project goal was to design and program a database to track the progress of program participants and then implement the database over Generations' office network.

The trip was a great success. Deborah and her board were pleased with the database design and felt that it would be an invaluable tool in running the Generations' program. Unfortunately, for their free time, while demonstrating the database, Deborah and her team became so excited that they though up a handful of new features that they hoped to be added to (a never before discussed) "version two" of the database. So the students were hard at work creating an upgrade to the database.

In addition to being persuaded to do more work, the students managed to have a lot of fun. Deborah and her team were all very friendly and welcoming. They also had a good time out the one night they had in town. They explored Michigan Street, the Navy Pier and the Sears Tower and ate about a dozen slices of Chicago-style pizza between the two of them. Great fun all around.

North East Community Center:

Written by Luz Camargo Agudelo, Arun Karthikeyan and Aditya Saini

North East Community Center (NECC) is a non-profit social services organization based out of Millerton, NY. They run a variety of programs for toddlers, children and senior citizens, and also get grants from a number of donors. NECC approached the Dingman Center seeking a cost-effective new database to better run their daily and long-term operations.

The Dingman Center team dived into the problem immediately and tried to fully analyze the issues at hand. Phone interviews were conducted with different staff members at NECC and an attempt was made to understand their individual requirements. Different staff members run different programs and deal with various kinds of data on members, donors and programs. Their mode of recording and storing data is also very diverse – some used Excel spreadsheets, some used an existing database (e-Tapestry) and some others relied on paper.

Once the problem was clearly identified, the Dingman Center team began a search for a new database that could increase NECC’s operational efficiency. NECC was spending $2,400 per year on e-Tapestry but were not entirely satisfied with its offerings. One of the objectives for the Dingman Center team was to ensure that the new database fits NECC’s budget. Other constraints for the new database were that it should be easy to understand to all present and future employees, easy to configure and link sub-databases within the system, and have access from anywhere across the internet.

After testing many sample databases, Webex Web Office was identified as a near-perfect solution for NECC’s database requirements. The Dingman Center team was in close contact with NECC’s Executive Director, Jenny Hansel, and demonstrated the power and relevance of Webex to her via a detailed PowerPoint presentation. After NECC accepted the team’s initial recommendation of Webex (and reasoning for rejecting other available databases), the team mapped out a detailed structure of sub-databases within Webex, utilizing its power to link tables and potential data fields required by various NECC programs.

The team then introduced individual program sub-databases to corresponding staff members at NECC via another round of conference calls. After they approved the recommendations and recognized the ease and power of Webex compared to their earlier mode of operations, the team finalized work on Webex and created another Powerpoint file that details step-by-step procedures to use various modules. The Powerpoint was deliberately made extensively detailed so future employees at NECC can train themselves without any personal help.

Finally, the Dingman Center team traveled to Millerton, NY on January 24, 2008 and visited NECC’s premises. The team met with the staff members and trained them on the overall capabilities of Webex and also in detail on their respective program modules. The training was well received and the team answered questions that NECC staff members had.

Overall, it was a great learning experience for the team, not just in database technologies but also in client relationships and project management. These skills and the knowledge gained about the functioning of a non-profit organization will certainly help the team members during their MBA and in their future endeavors.

Spring 2007 Projects

The Dingman Center Social Venture Consulting program and its partner, Grassroots.org, built upon its initial success by working with three additional non-profits and six MBA student consultants in spring 2007. The Social Venture Consulting program exposes MBA students to the importance of community service while giving them professional opportunities to apply their MBA education in the real world. Non-profit organizations benefit from the skill sets of business focused volunteers with savvy approaches to some common challenges of working with non-profits.

This past semester, two Grassroots' members, Byte Back and Road of Life, joined another non-profit, Arts for Anyone, in the Social Venturing program. Byte Back is a community computer training center in Northeast Washington, DC. It provides low-cost, hands-on computer training to underserved, low-skilled, and underemployed residents of the metropolitan Washington, DC area. To grow its relationship with the surrounding technology community, Sharon Bollers MBA/MPP ’08 and Rukhe Aghomo MBA ’08 ran a stakeholders survey, from soup to nuts, to identify best practices for Byte Back for building the essential relationships that would help launch Byte Back’s students into the professional world.

Road of Life’s mission is to eradicate preventable cancers and other prevalent diseases by educating children about the dangers of tobacco use, the importance of regular physical activity, and good nutrition. Laura Gonzalez MBA ’08 and Don Wood MBA ’08 created a business plan for how Road of Life could sell its curriculum to create an income stream to benefit its non-profit activities. As Rob Emrich, Road of Life Founder, described, “Our whole business model is geared around openness and we needed someone to define parameters and create a long-term, sustainable method of funding ourselves.” Rob felt this experience was useful for non-profits because “having those type of discussions and critical analysis about your operations is always important. How we can do things better and differently, understanding the social and the economic value of our work -- going through these discussions with the help of the MBA students was really, very valuable.”

Lastly, Arts for Anyone develops arts-infused initiatives that use the arts to educate and needed a marketing plan for their website and publication materials. From this experience, Laura Bennett MBA ’08 commented that, “I was able to actually help an arts organization and develop my marketing skills, which added to the educational benefit of my MBA and gave me something good to discuss in interviews for internships.” In addition, Tekisha Harvey MBA ‘08, added that getting client-face time was a great experience that I will take along with me in my future endeavors, whether they be consulting or not. It was also a great way to put our academic learning into practice. Learning to balance client needs with practical solutions was an invaluable takeaway.”

Fall 2006 Projects