Publications

30 Sep 2020
News

How Nonprofit Foundations Can Sustainably Fund Disease Research

2014
Article

The Governance of Social Enterprises: Mission Drift and Accountability Challenges in Hybrid Organizations

By: Alnoor Ebrahim, Julie Battilana and Johanna Mair

We examine the challenges of governance facing organizations that pursue a social mission through the use of market mechanisms. These hybrid organizations, often referred to as social enterprises, combine aspects of both charity and business at their core. In this... View Details

Keywords: Governance; Hybrid Organizations; Nonprofit; Performance Measurement; Legal Form; Agency Theory; Stakeholder Management; Mission and Purpose; Social Enterprise; Corporate Accountability

30 Sep 2020
News

How Nonprofit Foundations Can Sustainably Fund Disease Research

September 30, 2020
Article

How Nonprofit Foundations Can Sustainably Fund Disease Research

By: Richard G. Hamermesh and Kathy Giusti

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This article examines the rise of hybrid organizations that combine aspects of nonprofits and for-profits and the challenges hybrids face as they attempt to integrate traditionally separate organizational models.

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December 1996
Case

Common Fund Hedge Fund Portfolio, The

By: Andre F. Perold and William T. Spitz

The Common Fund, a nonprofit consortium of educational institutions, is deciding whether to create a fund of hedge funds for its members, and if it does, which hedge fund managers to select. View Details

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Investment Funds

Educators

Article

In Search of the Hybrid Ideal

By: Julie Battilana, Matthew Lee, John Walker and Cheryl Dorsey

In the first large-scale, quantitative study of nascent social entrepreneurs, researchers from Harvard Business School and Echoing Green examine the rise of hybrid organizations that combine aspects of nonprofits and for-profits and the challenges hybrids face as they... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Organizational Design

11 Nov 2021
News

These Fort Worth Nonprofits are Tapping Into the Wedding Industry to Fund Services

01 Oct 2001
Research & Ideas

Connecting With Nonprofits

and cause-related marketing. This excerpt focuses on the collaborative stages.Collaborations between businesses and nonprofit organizations are becoming more prevalent, important, and complicated. Marketing plays an increasingly... View Details

Keywords: by James Austin

27 Oct 2008
Lessons from the Classroom

Achieving Excellence in Nonprofits

words, the organization has as its main purpose the advancement of a set of social goals and the creation of social value. That obviously (by law!) includes nonprofit organizations, but it can also include the so-called new social... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

17 Oct 2011
Research & Ideas

How ‘Hybrid’ Nonprofits Can Stay on Mission

charitable donations like a typical nonprofit would. Commercial microfinance organizations often adopt a hybrid model, for example: they provide business loans to poor people who wouldn't traditionally... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

June 2022
Teaching Plan

GreenLight Fund

By: Brian Trelstad and Mel Martin

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 320-053. As Tara Noland, the Executive Director (ED) of GreenLight Cincinnati, reflected on her first few years on the job. Noland had delivered on what she had been hired to do in the city: work with leading philanthropists and nonprofit... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Venture Philanthropy; Replication; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Venture Capital; Social Issues; Decision Making; Cincinnati

March 2020 (Revised June 2022)
Case

GreenLight Fund

By: Brian Trelstad, Julia Kelley and Mel Martin

As Tara Noland, the Executive Director (ED) of GreenLight Cincinnati, reflected on her first few years on the job. Noland had delivered on what she had been hired to do in the city: work with leading philanthropists and nonprofit executives to use data and evidence to... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy; Venture Philanthropy; Replication; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Venture Capital; Social Issues; Decision Making; Analytics and Data Science; Cincinnati

Educators

October 2010
Article

The Emerging Capital Market for Nonprofits

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Allen S. Grossman

Many of our largest and most successful companies today did not exist 50 years ago. During this same time interval, companies that ranked among top in the 1960s have disappeared, been merged out of existence, or become much smaller presences in the U.S. industrial... View Details

Keywords: Capital Markets; Investment Funds; Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Corporate Accountability; Management Practices and Processes; Infrastructure; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Performance Effectiveness; Nonprofit Organizations