Alumni Clubs Sponsor Record Number of Executive Education Participants
Social Enterprise Newsletter, Fall 2001
Harvard Business School alumni are discovering new ways to invest in social enterprise at the local level. Last summer, seven alumni clubs assisted nonprofit leaders by sponsoring a record number of participants in the social enterprise Executive Education program, Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management (SPNM). The 15 club sponsorships, which came from cities as nearby as New York and as distant as Melbourne, Australia, nearly doubled the number of scholarships awarded last year. SPNM, one of the Initiative on Social Enterprise's flagship programs, is designed to hone participants' leadership skills and give them a broad, strategic view of general management in the nonprofit sector.
According to Stacey Childress (MBA '00), director of the Initiative on Social Enterprise, the sponsorships represent an important opportunity for the alumni clubs to have an impact on their local communities. "The Scholarships support people and organizations that will bring the fruits of the HBS experience directly back to the sponsoring region," Childress notes.
Byron Foster (MBA '57), former president of the HBS Club of Wisconsin, agrees. A pioneer of the scholarship program, he says the sponsorships have added HBS value to the Milwaukee community, which typically does not draw large numbers of HBS graduates. "We decided to put some of our outreach dollars into an investment that would likely provide a direct return to our community. We have continued to make that investment for each of the past four years because our scholarship graduates have been unanimously enthusiastic about the HBS faculty, the stimulation of the program, and the many positive relationships they developed with other SPNM participants."
Some clubs are taking extra steps to strengthen the ties between HBS and the nonprofit leaders they sponsor. The HBS Club of Atlanta, for instance, invites all scholarship recipients to its monthly breakfast meetings for informal networking and professional development, according to club member William T. Schwendler (MBA '66). The club also extends a free one-year membership to all scholarship recipients.
In addition to supporting social enterprise in their communities, the clubs themselves have reaped indirect rewards. Foster notes that the HBS Club of Wisconsin's support of SPNM scholarships with a portion of the proceeds from major club events, such as its annual Business Leader of the Year dinner, has strengthened interest in those programs. "The scholarships have generated a good deal of local publicity about our HBS club and about the School itself," he adds. "We believe that this helps us fulfill a key club objective—advancing HBS's good name in this part of the country."
Club support has also helped diversify the spectrum of Executive Education participants. Professor Stephen A. Greyser, SPNM faculty cochair, notes, "The sponsorships add a vital mix of participants to the program. Because they are on the ground in their communities, the clubs are able to identify nonprofit CEOs who otherwise might not be reached by our normal communications." This year, 142 SPNM participants attended from every region of the United States and from 16 countries around the world. Annual budgets of the represented organizations ranged from $300,000 to $900 million, with workforces as small as three and as large as 12,000. Participants came from nearly every part of the social sector.
Of course, the biggest beneficiaries of the club scholarships are the recipients themselves and the organizations they lead. SPNM participant Mabel Chau, executive director of the Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation, who received a scholarship from the HBS Association of Hong Kong, says that the program "touched on some of the most useful areas of my work as a nonprofit CEO. It broadened my perspective and highlighted the key issues my organization and I need to work on." Chau, who came away from the program inspired to develop and implement a new strategic plan for her organization, strongly encourages more clubs to support the nonprofit sector through Executive Education scholarship programs. With over 100 alumni clubs and a growing portfolio of Initiative on Social Enterprise programs, the opportunity has never been better.
For more information on how your alumni club can sponsor Executive Education participants, or about other Initiative on Social Enterprise Executive Education programs, please contact Eric King at eking@hbs.edu.
