Impact: Strategic Leadership of Nonprofit Organizations and Social Ventures

Our primary objective in this course is to prepare and equip you to play a high-impact leadership role in the social sector, as a founder, executive, board member, and/or donor/philanthropist. This course seeks to provide a survey of the strategic, governance, and management issues facing a wide range of social sector organizations and their executive and board leaders, in the era of venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. The students will also be introduced to core managerial issues uniquely defined by this sector such as development/fundraising, investment management, performance management and nonprofit finance. The course also provides an overview of the sector, including its history and economics. Cases involve a range of nonprofits, from smaller, social entrepreneurial to larger, more traditional organizations, including education, social service, environment, health care, religion, international NGO's and performing arts. In exploring these issues, this course reinforces the frameworks and concepts of strategic management introduced in the core first year courses. In addition to case discussions, the course employs role plays, study group exercises and many extraordinary guest speakers who are luminaries in the social sector.