1) Yale University’s School of Management
Yale’s School of Management
From its start in 1976, when SOM became Yale University’s youngest professional school, this institution has defined its mission differently. It was to educate not only business leaders but also leaders for society. To emphasize its dual public-private mission, SOM grads for years received a Master’s in Public and Private Management, not the MBA. In the mid-to-late 1980s, roughly half of the students came from public or non-profit jobs, with little or no business training or experience.
Much of this outward emphasis has changed. SOM has granted an MBA for some time now, and incoming students are more likely to hail from Goldman Sachs and the Boston Consulting Group than from government or social enterprise. Yet, the school remains deeply committed to social entrepreneurship. Ever since U.S. News began ranking specialty programs in 1993, Yale’s business school has come out on top in non-profit management, second to none. Yale’s success in this specialty ranking owes no small part to its early start. First impressions die hard. Still, this is a standout program for MBAs who as John Gardner once put it, “strive to alleviate misery and redress grievances, or give rein to the mind’s curiosity and the soul’s longing.” A partnership on non-profit ventures at the school brings together three strands of SOM teaching–entrepreneurship, business skills, and social responsibility.
The school currently lists 13 electives in its course catalog for non-profit types, ranging from “Financial Statements of Non-Profit Organizations” to the “Business of Not-for-Profit Management.” The latter course seeks to answer the following questions, some of them quite amusing: “How do not-for-profit organizations actually function? How do they attract ‘customers?’ How do these companies grow when there are no owners with financial incentives to grow the business? What are the core elements of a ‘good’ not-for-profit company? What are the metrics for determining the health of a company without profit? And, why would anybody work for such a crazy place?” Gotta love that last one.
Clearly, though, some of these 13 courses are stretched to cover the non-profit sector. Consider “Doing Business in the Developing World.” The course is a deep dive into economic strategies in both for-profit and non-profit organizations. Even so, it’s a remarkably innovative take at a highly innovative business school for would-be social capitalists. One thing to consider: Yale is a relatively small school so once you get into a specialty area, it’s faculty is sliced and diced to tiny bits. While 13 courses represent a nice portfolio of options for the non-profit student, Stanford dishes up 29 different options for social entrepreneurs.
For a complete listing of Yale’s 13 courses in this area, go here.
2) University of California-Berkeley (Haas School)
Berkeley’s Haas School of Business
In U.S. News’ 2010 survey, the Haas School edges past Stanford which was number two in 2009. Frankly, we don’t agree with this assessment, but that still doesn’t take away from the splendid work in social entrepreneurship that Haas’ Center for Non-Profit and Public Leadership has accomplished. Its mission: “to inspire the next generation of leaders to create and seize opportunities to achieve social impact across
In U.S. News’ 2010 survey, the Haas School edges past Stanford which was number two in 2009. Frankly, we don’t agree with this assessment, but that still doesn’t take away from the splendid work in social entrepreneurship that Haas’ Center for Non-Profit and Public Leadership has accomplished. Its mission: “to inspire the next generation of leaders to create and seize opportunities to achieve social impact across sectors.”
The center is meant to inspsire and prepare students to use their business skills in the social sector. Coursework is focused on four core themes: social entrepreneurship and social impact, governance and leadership, organizational strategy, and financial management. The center also provides students with hands-on field work opportunities that link MBAs up with non-profit leaders and their organizations.
Berkeley has an impressive array of experiential programs in social entrepreneurship. S3, for social sector solutions, deploys student consultant teams with coaches from prestige consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to work with selected non-profits on high-impact initiatives. Co-taught by Paul Jansen, McKinsey’s director of its global philanthropy practice, the program essentially is an elective course, “Social Sector Solutions,” that also brings other McKinsey consultants in as coaches to student teams. MBAs have worked with the National Council on Youth Crime and Delinquency as well as the National Indian Justice Center, among many other non-profit institutions.
An Oakland Small Schools Residency program engages Haas students in educational reform through a residency program with a school in nearby Oakland, a urban center that has seen better times. Haas also boasts an annual education leadership case competition which brings together teams from top b-schools to present solutions to education challenges.
The center hosts the Schwab Charitable Philantrophy Speakers, bringing together students, alums and phhilanthropic leaders to tackle cutting-edge social impact issues. Finally, the center also has a Berkeley Board Fellows program that places more than 60 students on some 50 non-profit boards each year to serve the local community and develop future board leaders. It’s a nine-month program in which students have sat on the boards of such organizations as the Berkeley Symphony, the Family Emergency Shelter Coalition, the Marin Theater Company, and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. The fellows program is a highly creative and especially attractive attribute of the Haas focus in social entrepreneurship.
All these varied programs are the star components of Haas’ social enterprise thrust (and have clearly helped it in the U.S. News survey) because the school only lists 10 electives in the area, vs. Yale’s 13 options or Stanford’s 29 different courses. At Haas, the courses range from “Leading and Managing Non-Profit Organizations,” an intro course to the basic business workings of social enterprises, to the “Economics of Philanthropy,” in which the class makes a $10,000 contribution to a non-profit. In the course, student teams research and identify social organizations, perform due diligence, and then recommend the worthiness of the organization for the gift.
For a complete listing of Berkeley’s courses in social entrepreneurship, go here.
