Social Enterprise Initiative

Summer Associates


2001 Social Enterprise Summer Fellowship Summaries

2001 Summer Summaries

Eduardo Acuna, Center for International Development at Harvard University

The objective of SARI, is to improve the lives of individuals in poor rural communities by leveraging information and communications technologies to facilitate economic development. Ultimately, the project's success will be measured by its social and economic impact and viability, which depends critically on the appropriateness of applications provided to end-users.

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Daniella Ballou, International Rescue Committee

I spent my summer working for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a leading humanitarian aid organization that provides aid to refugees throughout the world. This was my second summer working for the IRC, having spent the previous summer in the IRC field office in Liberia. The summer in Liberia taught me a great deal about humanitarian aid and increased my dedication to working for an international nonprofit. I set out to find an opportunity to see an international nonprofit organization from a headquarters perspective. I was extremely fortunate to obtain a summer position working for Reynold Levy, President & CEO of the IRC. During my summer, I learned a great deal about what it takes to be a leader of a large humanitarian aid organization. I had the opportunity to work on a broad range of projects, including initiatives to strengthen corporate partnerships, raise public awareness of refugees and examine board governance options. I also had the opportunity to observe key functional areas within the organization and gain an understanding of the perspectives of top management.

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Yi Bei, Project Renewal

As a recent graduate from Harvard Business School, I worked at Project Renewal for about ten weeks during the summer (July 16 – Sept 25). Project Renewal's outreach, treatment, housing and employment programs give homeless, mentally ill and substance-abusing adults the chance to reclaim their lives and become self-sufficient. As a Summer Associate, I worked closely with the Director of Social Enterprise to improve Project Renewal's revenue-generating activities. I conducted a cost and pricing analysis project for Comfort Foods, Project Renewal's institutional catering business. Through the program, I observed the differences between non-profit sector and for-profit sector, learned a lot about how to run a social enterprise, thus better prepared myself for my long-term career goal.

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Ryan Bloom, Community Development Venture Capital Alliance

This summer I spent seven weeks doing an internship at the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA). CDVCA promotes the use of the tools of venture capital to create jobs, entrepreneurial capacity and wealth to advance the livelihoods of low-income people and the economies of distressed communities. During my internship I worked primarily on two main assignments: developing an in-depth case study for CDVCA's next annual training conference; and working on parts of CDVCA's newsletter. I would highly recommend a social enterprise internship to anyone interested in the non-profit sector. Working at CDVCA allowed me to learn more about how a nonprofit organization is run, and what primary challenges it can expect to encounter. The internship also allowed me to meet other people with similar interests and begin building a network of people in the social enterprise sector.

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Monica Chi, Roberts Enterprise Development Fund

The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) is an innovative philanthropic organization based in San Francisco, CA, committed to engaged grant making with local nonprofits. REDF's mission is to create jobs for economically disadvantaged populations in the Bay Area by working with nonprofits that are operating social purpose enterprises. As a summer intern, I worked on organization development issues for the fund, as well as a business planning project with one of the portfolio members. By the end of the summer, I had presented the results of a financial analysis/feasibility study to an Executive Director within the portfolio, developed a business plan for a social purpose enterprise, and helped the REDF Managing Director assess options surrounding legal structure, funding strategy, etc. for the fund going forward.

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Amy Cogan, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

I worked in London for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a development bank established in 1991 in order to foster the transition towards open market-oriented economies in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. As a summer associate, I researched investment opportunities, analyzed financing structures and developed financial models for property and tourism projects in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia and Croatia.

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Leslie Crutchfield, City Year Inc.

During the summer of 2001 I worked with senior executives at City Year to create a business plan for a new nonprofit organization, The Action Tank. The project evolved from research that I conducted during my last semester at HBS as part of an Independent Field Study with Professors Michael Porter and Allen Grossman and student Catriona Larritt. That six-month HBS study involved researching the commercial incubator industry, analyzing best practices, and then writing a business plan for a model nonprofit incubator. Alan Khazei and Michael Brown, Co-Founders of City Year, expressed interest in the research and invited me to work with them and John Kalafatas on developing their own ideas related to nonprofit incubation. The net result of my work this summer is a business plan for the "action tank" – a new entity designed to bridge the gap between public policy and nonprofit practice while incubating promising social enterprises. Many social entrepreneurs today are so focused on building their individual programs to solve pressing social problems that they often proceed without effective policy agendas that could leverage their ideas for systemic social change. Meanwhile, legislators and policy elites invent new governmental policies to address the very same societal problems--often without knowledge of entrepreneurial nonprofit efforts that have already proven successful at the programmatic level. The Action Tank will bring these two often-divided worlds together, so that the best solutions to public problems are discovered and expanded and communities across the nation can benefit from these entrepreneurial insights.

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Ipsita Dasgupta, Women's World Banking

This summer I worked for Women's World Banking in New York City. I worked for a group called the Global Network for Banking and Innovation. My project entailed conducting a study on the use of technology among micro finance institutions in Asia. The specific institutions I worked with included Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Jakarta, Indonesia), Bank Dagang Bali (Bali, Indonesia), SEWA Bank (Ahmedabad, India), and Delta Life Insurance (Dacca, Bangladesh). The elements of the study included the current status of technology usage, future goals of implementation, barriers to adoption, and links to business strategy for each institution. The objective was to work with senior management at each of the institutions to explore the technology options available and identify ones that are plausible and well aligned with their strategic initiatives. The project was successfully completed and well received by WWB and the four respective institutions.

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Olufunso Doherty, United Methodist Services for the Aging (UMSA)

My summer as a Nonprofit and Public Management Fellow was spent working with the United Methodist Services for the Aging (UMSA), a nonprofit provider of long term care to the aging and frail elderly. On its 26-acre single-site facility located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, UMSA provides varying levels of care ranging from independent living, through assisted living to nursing care. It also operates a specialty Alzheimer's care facility. UMSA's mission in serving older adults is to maintain its residents at their highest individual level of function, moving them through its continuum of care as their acuity levels and corresponding needs change. Over the summer, I worked on an organizational self-assessment for UMSA as part of a strategic planning exercise. I also worked with UMSA's senior management team to develop a board level balanced scorecard intended to serve as a foundation for UMSA's strategic performance measurement system. I and my family had the opportunity to get to know Pittsburgh in our time there. One of the highlights of the summer was when Kiitan my three year old daughter got to meet and spend time with Fred Rogers (Mr. Roger's Neighborhood).

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Mariano Garrasino, ACCION International

ACCION International is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing poverty by providing loans and other financial services to poor and low-income people who start their own businesses. An international leader in the field, ACCION is an umbrella organization for a network of microfinance institutions in 15 Latin American countries and 23 U.S. cities and towns. My task consisted of the development of two projects in which the Research & Development area currently had specific needs for a summer internship. The first project was the Development and Testing of Costing Model for New Product Development Initiatives. . One of the primary activities of the Research & Development department in ACCION is to support the affiliated Microfinance Institutions in identifying, developing and testing new financial services for the low-income population in Latin America. One of the key steps in this process is to evaluate the potential sustainability/profitability of proposed products. At this time, few of the affiliates have the capacity to conduct such an evaluation in a meaningful way. The primary responsibility for the summer has been to work with other members of the R&D department and ACCION's technical assistance staff, and the microlending institutions to develop a generic projections model that can be used by affiliates with little computer expertise to accurately forecast the potential profitability of a new product. The second project was the Refinement of market research strategy & training manuals and guides for conducting qualitative market research. Based on my previous experience in the marketing area of different consumer product companies, and as part of a Market Intelligence team, I reviewed the existing strategy, processes and manuals for conducting qualitative market research (e.g., focus groups) and made recommendations as to how they could be improved.

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Anne Ho, Community Development Venture Capital Alliance

Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA) promotes use of the tools of venture capital to create jobs, entrepreneurial capacity and wealth that advance the livelihoods of low-income people and the economies of distressed communities. This summer, my main project was an analysis of one of CDVCA's members, Silicon Valley Community Ventures (SVCV). SVCV is a community development fund focused on achieving a double bottom line (financial and social returns) and was incubated by Accel Partners. Through company visits, interviewing fund management, and independent research, I analyzed several aspects of the fund and crafted conclusions that may be applicable to other practitioners in the field. Key findings include the paradoxical need for community development despite the economic boom in California. Although the Bay Area is home to many of the country's pre-eminent venture capital firms, low-income entrepreneurs have found it difficult to access capital and resources.

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Jonathan Hodgson, Common Good

I worked with Common Good, a venture philanthropy organization based in Waterville, Maine. My specific projects were with two Common Good partner organizations in the Portland area, Stone Soup and East End Kids Katering. Stone Soup is focused on building a business that provides job training and employment to homeless teens and adults, and I worked with them to expand their offerings to include business lunch catering. East End Kids Katering serves meals to low-income children while providing job training for low-income adults, supporting both through professional catering operations. I worked with East End to evaluate new business opportunities, as well as to understand the profitability of the existing customer base in both childcare and catering.

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Yuki Horiguchi, Doorways to Dreams

This summer, I worked as an intern for D2D Fund, Inc., an entrepreneurial non-profit organization with a mission to provide financial services to low-income individuals. Specifically, I worked in a technology-focused role, managing the relationship between our organization and our software development partner organization. Being part of such a small team, I also stepped outside of my technical role and assisted with applying for foundation grants, maintaining contacts with various financial partners, and working on office set-up issues.

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Neil Houghton, Low Cost Eyeglasses

Low Cost Eyeglasses is a social purpose organization that will develop and implement systems that provide eyeglasses to the one billion people in the developing world who need eyeglasses yet currently do not have them. Unlike existing eyeglasses that are difficult to purchase and very expensive, Low Cost Eyeglasses is developing eyeglasses that are inexpensive, accessible, and easy to purchase. We accomplish both low cost and availability through a product design that eliminates complexity and a channel design that reduces the need for optometrists. The principal activities of Low Cost Eyeglasses include: Low cost eyeglass technology development; Technology implementation in lesser developed countries; Establishment of distribution channels; and Training. Low Cost Eyeglasses is the first winner in the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Business Plan Contest . After extensive research and planning, Low Cost Eyeglasses won the contest in May 2001. Naomi Weinberg, a classmate and section-mate, and I worked this summer to make Low Cost Eyeglasses become a reality. During the summer my principal task was to refine the Low Cost Eyeglass service/product, which included technical choices and distribution choices. Naomi was also a summer fellow.

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Patrick Hudson, Endeavor

The Endeavor Initiative is a non-profit organization whose primary goal is to promote economic, social and cultural development through the innovation, leadership and wealth creation provided by emerging-market entrepreneurs. My assignment took me to Memory Computacion, a small software company located in Montevideo, Uruguay. Memory controls 71% of the Uruguayan market for business management software for small companies and has begun selling its products in limited capacity in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay. Working with the CEO, I began my summer by evaluating various business strategies and growth options in the face of a South American economy that continued to weaken. After deciding a strategic partner would be the best option, I spent considerable time and effort identifying and evaluating potential companies that could help Memory succeed as it moved abroad. As my internship ended, Memory was in negotiations with the second largest Brazilian software manufacturer, a company I had recommended as a potential partner. In addition to strategic planning, I got involved in evaluating the company's operational processes and internal reporting tools. My recommendation to restructure the software development department was implemented. Beyond this, I identified several areas where Memory could improve upon its internal reporting. I created various reports to help them track their cash management, sales contacts and other financial indicators.

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Jeb Jones, Endeavor

Endeavor's mission is to become the leading supporter of entrepreneurship in emerging markets. With my previous experiences either studying, working, or traveling in several Latin American countries, and my desire to work with entrepreneurial companies, Endeavor was a perfect fit for a summer internship. The companies selected to be a part of the Endeavor network have passed a screening process that evaluates the potential for the company to become an entrepreneurial role model and create positive social change. My role was to provide strategic advice and direction to Claudio Lopez Silva, the energetic founder and CEO of a small telecommunications software company called Service Bureau Intetel. Through ten weeks of evaluating internal operations, estimating external markets, brainstorming strategic options, and analyzing Argentina's economic situation, we developed a growth plan for the company based on a repositioning of its service offerings and a reorganization of its management ranks.

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Sanitwong Jongsaritwang, Securities and Exchange Commission

I took my summer internship in two organizations: the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand (a government agency) in the Office of Capital Market Research and Development and the CVS Corporation (a private company) in the marketing/merchandising area. One of the major differences between the two is that at CVS, I worked on interesting "implementation" projects, but at SEC, I worked on economic "policy development" projects. I then realized that in private firm, I made impact to only the company, but in public organization, I made impact to the whole national economy. Clearly, my work at SEC was much more challenging, meaningful, and beneficial.

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Theresse Kaori Kawarabayashi, Endeavor

During the summer of 2001, I interned at Endeavor, a nonprofit organization that promotes international development by assisting entrepreneurs in emerging markets. As an Endeavor summer associate, I was assigned to work with a company called Alimentos Nutra Bien in Chile. I provided consulting services to Nutra Bien by creating financial valuation models, writing a business plan, analyzing company growth options and developing presentations for potential international investors.

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Lucas Klein, New Profit Inc.

This summer I worked for the venture philanthropy firm New Profit Inc. Venture Philanthropy is the process of applying the principles of venture capital to the nonprofit capital market. I worked on six projects and helped manage two others. I led intellectual capital development project that will shape strategy and operations by identifying the challenges to growth faced by nonprofit organizations during different phases of their lifecycle and the archetypes of organizations that make the sets of challenges different. I performed sales analyses and developed marketing materials that helped generate $500,000 in investment. I led and participated in due diligence efforts resulting in two positive investment recommendations. I managed the deal pipeline and revised and improved process saving the organization time and money. I developed NPI's economic model and forecast that shaped a new development strategy. I also did a bit of portfolio management, helping a portfolio organization identify its operational needs and developing projects to satisfy those needs. It was an excellent experience from which I learned a great deal, and I am grateful to all those who helped make it possible.

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Charles Langston, The Center for Sustainable Building and Technology

The Center for Sustainable Building and Technology is a nonprofit committed to exploring, developing, and promoting practical uses for energy efficient and pollution-reducing construction technologies. The idea of sustainable building is to use building materials and methods that promote environmental quality, economic vitality, and social benefit through design, construction, and operation of the building. This goal often incorporates a very broad spectrum of considerations such as life cycle analysis, watershed planning, aesthetic design, energy efficiency, resource use, etc. The organization saw that in the area of sustainable building architects, engineers, suppliers, contractors, tradesmen, and environmentalists were often not communicating effectively--making broad considerations of impact nearly impossible to coordinate and act upon. The organization remodeled a house in Cambridge, MA, as a demonstration of the technology and the coordination required between all the parties involved. With the project near to complete, my job this past summer was to document the technologies, methods, and materials incorporated into the project--translating the technical engineering language into terms that everyone can understand. My work will go on to be the basis for an exhibit in the house, a guidebook to the residents and managers of the house, and a book for the industry describing the project. I worked highly independently and used architectural/engineering drawings, meetings with engineers, internet sources, books, and the house itself to become an expert on the project--with a focus on the energy technologies.

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Robin Lawrence, National Parks Conservation Association

During my summer internship with the NPCA, I worked under the Business Plan Initiative (BPI) as a consultant to Virgin Islands National Park. The goal of the initiative was to work with park management to build a sound business plan for the park in order to facilitate better financial and operations management in the park. With a complete business plan in hand, managers at Virgin Islands National Park have a vehicle to communicate their funding needs to local politicians and on Capitol Hill in a more structured and articulate manner. The document will also serves as an invaluable data point for NPCA, as they continue their research into the funding history of the entire national park system. In addition, the business plan will serve as a management tool for park managers in their strategic planning activities for the future.

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Alex Mandl, TechFoundation

Given that TechFoundation had recently entered the nonprofit technology coordination industry, they needed an evaluation of the landscape of customers, competitors, and opportunities available to them. The initial emphasis of my internship was to gauge the level of interest in their vision and services amongst experts in social entrepreneurship and nonprofit management. Based on some early indications and the pressing internal needs of the organization, my project evolved into a greater appraisal of the issues and challenges facing TechFoundation on an organizational level. Despite the shifting nature of my responsibilities, working at TechFoundation was a terrific way to study an entrepreneurial endeavor at a critical stage of development in an area where performance measures are not explicitly defined.

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Federico Martin del Campo, Mi Banco

Mi Banco is a financial institution focused on providing credit and business advisory services to low-income entrepreneurs in Mexico. Mi Banco's loans will serve to finance the general needs of various microenterprises, such as small corner stores. These needs may include working capital (inventory, new product lines, etc.) and capital investments (equipment, physical expansions, appearance, etc.) This project will make a big difference in lower income Mexican entrepreneurs since access to credit will broaden their opportunities and increase their chances of success.

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Megan McLean, International Rescue Committee

This summer I worked for the Government Relations Department of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a humanitarian organization that provides assistance to refugees. Over the course of my ten-week internship, I focused primarily on refugee-related advocacy issues such as small arms, conflict diamonds, coltan, and HIV/AIDS, working with members of the Government Relations office and the broader IRC community to develop organizational consensus around each issue and a strategy for communicating with the outside world. I also worked on a campaign to encourage President Bush to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to an early member of the IRC community for his work in saving refugees of Nazi Germany.

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Augusto Moronta, Coro Northern California

My role in the organization was to determine ways to expand Coro's offerings to the community, based on a strategic planning process previously performed by a well-known management consulting firm. During my eight-week internship I develop a set of recommendations for a new community program. This program will be aimed to emerging and establish community leaders in the Bay Area. Its main goal is to train these leaders to have a higher impact in their communities and to better understand public policy issues.

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Abdu Mukhtar, National Kidney Foundation

The National Kidney Foundation of Singapore (NKF) is the largest charitable organization in Singapore, providing treatments to over 2,000 patients at 20 of its state-of-the-art dialysis centers. With annual revenues of S$60 million, NKF is the world's largest not-for-profit dialysis provider, raising more funds per capita than any other non-profit in the world. The goals of my project were to initiate a brand strategy for the NKF's prevention program at a national level and to come up with innovative ways to overcome negative public perceptions and drive the message of healthcare and disease prevention amongst the Singaporean public. Bringing knowledge and skills from my healthcare background and skills learnt at HBS, and focusing on the Singaporean general practitioner and taxi driver audiences, I developed an integrated marketing communications plan. Recommendations were made on the mission, message, media channels, money to be spent and measurement of impact for each target market. The proposal will provide the framework for the NKF to continue its communications efforts to educate the public about preventive health measures.

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Roderic Norman, Advanced Technology Development Center

Participating in the Summer Nonprofit Fellowship Program has given me the opportunity to explore new ways for the public and private sectors to work together in approaching economic development issues. As a state funded and university affiliated incubator, ATDC's mission is to promote economic development in Georgia, mainly through the creation of jobs. By working with early stage technology companies, they have been able to achieve their mission while helping companies reach sustainability and profitability. This summer, one of my main projects was working with Fizzion, a new technology accelerator between ATDC and The Coca-Cola Company. This innovative partnership between one of the oldest public sector incubators and one of the most successful US beverage companies holds great potential for other corporations in the US and abroad. For me, it begins to lay the foundation for a new model of development in the international arena, specifically emerging markets, that leverages the expertise of the public and private sectors to promote business growth and create jobs. My experience this summer has specifically helped frame my thinking on ways in which corporates, the private equity community and public sector organizations can participate in further developing Africa. I intend to build on my experiences this summer throughout my second year.

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Neera Nundy, Women's World Banking and Impact Partners

This summer I had the opportunity to pursue two internships that were extremely different experiences. The first six weeks I worked Women's World Banking, a global institution devoted to expanding low-income women's economic access, participation and power. My project was specifically in the financial products and services division working closely with the Finance Director and the President. I was asked to evaluate equity-financing structures of formalized microfinance institutions to assess whether the WWB should provide equity financing options to its affiliates (the microfinance institutions in the WWB network). Equity financing is a new form of financing in the microfinance industry and these institutions are faced with growing pressures to formalize as financial banking institutions to assure sustainability. This project was important to the WWB, because it would create potential conflicts to their long established traditions and mission. However considering lack of funding is a serious impediment to sustainability and other industry trends, I recommended that the WWB consider equity participation and applicable financial services to its network affiliates. The remaining six weeks I worked with an India focused Social Venture Philanthropy Fund called ImpactPartners (Impact). I spent this time in both urban and rural India, evaluating and assisting various organizations that are in the Impact investment portfolio. This work included traveling to Calcutta to work with a mental-health organization that implements creative therapy sessions for poor women in government hospitals, then off to Kharagpur (a two hour train ride from Calcutta to rural India) to work with village children in developing an educational curriculum, then to Madras to work with RIN (rural innovators network) who assist poor farmers in developing business plans to bring products-to-market (eg coconut de-husker), and lastly Magic Bus, which offers a 2 day recreational trip for Bombay street children. After spending 4 weeks with these organizations, I spent the last two weeks at SEWA Bank (Self-Employed Women's Association) with fieldworkers surveying various savers and their interest in a pension-type mutual fund, which would be the first of its kind offered by Alliance Capital (a US based Asset Management Company). I was involved in bringing these two parties together.

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Alexander Nyhan, Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development

From May 14 th through August 17 th , I worked as a consultant to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Develompent of Washington, D.C. I focused on two main projects: a) helping to draft the District's city-wide neighborhood commercial revitalization plan; and, b) helping a local community-based organization to refocus its strategy and activities. Both projects turned out to be infinitely more challenging (difficult) than I had originally anticipated. The crafting of the commercial revitalization plan was made complex due to the highly interdependent way in which in the District government operates and the fact that the present administration is trying to re-create a government whose capacity was seriously eroded during previous administrations. For example, to write a plan that would be successfully implemented, the Deputy Mayor's Office had to interface with the Office of Planning, the Department of Housing and Community Development, the Office of Banking and Financial Insitutions, the National Main Streets Center, other government agencies and many private- and nonprofit-sector groups. In the end, I learned much more than I had originally thought and found both that I have much much more to learn about urban planning and that the relatively simple frameworks I had learned at HBS were very useful in distilling the right questions to ask in what appeared to be endlessly complicated public policy trade-offs. Perhaps more than anything else, I learned that history and ethnicity are vital issues that require the utmost attention and care. I would go back to Washington in government or as an entrepreneur. To achieve success in both roles, one must identify and solve market failures. HBS traning is useful to that end.

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Sonja Okun, Robin Hood Foundation

As a summer intern at the Robin Hood Foundation, a leading venture philanthropy organization in New York, I worked on two projects. The majority of my time was dedicated toward an analysis of nonprofit revenue-generating enterprises run by organizations in Robin Hood's portfolio. In addition, I worked with one of Robin Hood's grantees on selecting a consulting firm to do strategic planning with them, designing and conducting a "situational analysis" of the agency, and then developing a "Strengths and Needs" analysis which will guide them in their strategic planning process.

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Elena Pirondini, San Francisco Opera

The San Francisco Opera was founded in 1923 with a mission "to perpetuate, enrich and develop opera as an art form, and to serve the community through broad outreach". It is currently the second largest Opera House in the United States and among the top 10 in the world. On average, the Opera presents 95 performances of 12 different opera productions per year, attracting 300,000 people. In the performing arts scene the SF Opera distinguishes itself for its unique focus on marketing and for the intense leverage on technology to reach new audiences. In order to take advantage of the economic and demographic shifts in the Silicon Valley Area, the San Francisco Opera has engaged in the Silicon Valley Initiative, a coordinated plan aimed at increasing awareness, attendance and ultimately donations in the Silicon Valley Area. As part of this project, my internship has been focused on the development of an-online course about opera, aimed at attracting new audiences and lower the barriers to opera attendance. I have been given entire ownership of the project, performing different activities that included research, benchmarking, developing of a plan for the initiative, initiating and developing the partnerships that will make the implementation of the on-line courses possible.

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Jessica Porten, The Broad Foundation

I worked as a Summer Associate at The Broad Foundation in Los Angeles, CA, a foundation dedicated to improving leadership, management and governance of K-12 public education. My responsibilities included: designing an evaluation system to measure the success of the Foundation's individual investments and the success of the Foundation as a whole, streamlining the Foundation's due diligence on prospective grantees; and advising grantees on program implementation. This internship gave me a deeper understanding of how public education functions at the district level, and a chance to work alongside incredibly intelligent, committed individuals, many of whom had significant business backgrounds and were MBAs themselves.

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Derek Schrader, Suffolk County Correctional Facility Education Department

My ISE internship project was to create and teach an intensive business training program for advanced students in the Suffolk County House of Correction. The program included a strong emphasis on business ethics, and on self-management principles to help inmates prepare to be effective entrepreneurs and employees after leaving the facility. In order to build links between the HOC's Education Department and other organizations with similar goals, I invited guest speakers from the Small Business Administration, The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, and Fleet Boston's Community Lending department to my class.

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Claudia Sender, The Pacific Business Center of the University of Hawaii College of Business Administration

My summer internship consisted of a 10-week long assignment at the Pacific Business Center Program at the University of Hawaii. The Pacific Business Center Program works as a non-profit consulting firm, helping entrepreneurs, managers and owners of small businesses located in the Pacific region develop their businesses. As opposed to most of PBCP's traditional projects, the specific project I was assigned to had a government institution as client: the Rongelap Council. Rongelap is a small atoll in the North Pacific region. It was severely affected by the atomic bomb tests ran by the American government in the 1950s and had it's population displaced after the effects of the radiation on the local population achieved alarming rates. Our project has as major goal provide a set of recommendations to the Rongelap Government regarding what type of development plan they should be looking forward as they plan to resettle the 3,000 plus Rongelapese descendents back in Rongelap now that major tests proved that the atoll is suitable for living again. Our team, formed by both students and faculty from the various schools in the University of Hawaii and two MBA students from Harvard Business School made big strides during the summer. Our achievements included: recommendation of what types of businesses should be developed in the island in order to bring economic development respecting both the environment and the local culture; a long-distance education strategy in order to prepare the population for the new challenges and the documentation of the local terrestrial plants as well as their potential use.

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Andrew Toma, Endeavor

My summer fellowship was with Endeavor and one of its sponsored companies, MultiDelivery located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Endeavor is a not-for-profit economic development organization with a goal to encourage entrepreneurship in Latin America as a means to further advance economic growth in the region. Endeavor is headquartered in New York and currently has local operations in Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil. Among its programs to support entrepreneurial venture creation, Endeavor sponsors MBA students to spend the summer to assist an Endeavor entrepreneur in building and professionalizing his/her business. The program is an opportunity for MBA students to learn first hand about Latin America and entrepreneurship, and for the entrepreneur to gain meaningful advice regarding his/her business. MultiDelivery is a logistics company that serves as an intermediary between restaurants/convenience product providers and customers by providing under one-hour delivery services to the residents of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Currently, MultiDelivery delivers for around 200 restaurants and 30 product providers such as a florist, bakery and convenience store. Its customer base exceeds 100,000 and can order via the internet or through a telephone call center that is open seven days a week from morning until night.

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Warren Tranquada, Nation Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship

Over a two-week period, refined the business plan of a potential for-profit spin-off of an established non-profit. Performed market research and obtained input from working team members. Work on the business plan included a financial forecast, funding structure, pricing structure, distribution design and investor positioning.

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Christine Tse, Youth Advocacy Project

I helped to develop a strategic plan for the Youth Advocacy Project (YAP) in Roxbury, MA. YAP provides advocacy and legal representation for young people who are unable to pay for counsel in delinquency and youthful offender cases, as well as in related disciplinary and administrative proceedings. I spent the bulk of my time developing the strategic plan; I also wrote fundraising and gift acknowledgment letters, created a presentation targeting private donors, and developed job descriptions. I was able to apply the concepts that I had learned in my first year and felt that I really made a difference for the organization.

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Alan Tudge, Balkanu & Indigenous Enterprise Partnerships Cairns

My fellowship involved working with an organisation called Balkanu. Balkanu is an Australian Aboriginal organisation with a mandate to promote economic development for the people of Cape York (the north-eastern tip of Australia). The people of Cape York are nearly entirely welfare dependent and this is seen as a root cause of many of the social problems in Indigenous Communities The overarching goal of Balkanu is to reduce welfare dependency and create a "real economy". My role consisted of two parts. First, to help define how a regional organisation can assist with Indigenous business development. And second, to provide advice on a number of specific business development projects.

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Martha Velando, International Institute of the East Bay

During 10 weeks I worked at the International Institute of the East Bay (IIEB) as a summer intern. IIEB is a non-profit organization based in California that offers several programs and services to immigrants and refugees with the main goal of promoting their self-sufficiency. The project I worked on was the strategic planning of the organization. IIEB was facing through several issues (lack of funding, high turnover, customer base changes, etc). I and other MBA summer intern (Bill Bang) were assigned to conduct the strategic planning in order to provide management with better information to define the future role of IIEB giving that changing environment. The strategic planning assessment comprised three phases: design, market research and decision-making. In order to have an executive team, the Executive Director -an Irish woman educated in Stanford (MBA) with a long experience in non-profit organizations-; one of the members of the board –an ex-worker of Toyota Strategic Planning Department-, an pro-bono external advisor –a member of an strategic consulting firm- joined Bill and me. During the 10 weeks period we hosted two meetings with the board of directors, two strategic planning retreats with the staff and the advisory council and a long list of deep interviews: one on one sessions with other non-profit organizations' leaders, exit interviews with personnel, focus groups with clients and no clients, panels with similar organizations staff, and interviews with funders and potential strategic partners. The objective of all this research was to get quality information around the immigration topic in the East Bay so the decision makers at the organization could take better choices around IIEB role in the community. As a result, we compiled all the quality data received during the research phase in a final presentation for the ED and the board of directors. They decided to show this presentation to a bigger group comprising the advisory council and external agents in order to decide about the future of the organization in terms of programs to be offered, customers to be served and mission to be pursued given the new circumstances around the immigration issue in California.

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Guillermo Villanueva Samudio, National Kidney Foundation of Singapore

I spent my summer working for The National Kidney Foundation of Singapore (NKFS), an organization committed to saving lives of people with kidney failure and preventing the disease through Singapore. The NKFS is the largest non-for-profit organization in Singapore and is the organization that raises more funds per capita in the world, as one in every two Singaporeans has ever been a donor of the NKFS and one in every ten is a regular donor. The NKFS accomplishes its mission solely through public funding raised through its numerous fundraising departments. During the internship, I was attached to the direct marketing department. My task consisted in recommending and implementing new fundraising opportunities in a saturated market where one out of every ten Singaporeans already contributes to the NKFS. The project assigned meant working closely with senior level management to come up with recommendations to the CEO on new methods that would enhance the NKFS fundraising efforts through the uses of new technology tools. Specifically, I worked in developing a new way by which the NKFS could communicate emotionally with its current and potential base of donors through streaming media. At the end of my summer internship, I delivered a presentation about my findings and presented a streaming media video to be used as a test product for high-end donors that have access to broadband Internet speed. I made a presentation in the company's auditorium in front of approximately 400 employees. Possessing an extremely strong leadership and learning culture, I was very impressed about the very high work standards at NKFS and was very interesting to see how this organization has been built from scratch to what it is today: a world class health organization. And solely depending from public donations. I was really impressed.

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Charles Warner, Common Good

I worked this summer for Common Good, an organization I learned about through the Social Enterprise job post list. Common Good, located in Waterville, Maine, is a venture philanthropy organization that provides both capital and business assistance to nonprofit partners. In particular, Common Good works with nonprofits aiming to become largely or fully financially self-sustaining through revenue-generating activities. The Executive Director is Kristin Majeska, a Stanford MBA and former Farber Fellow at the Roberts Enterprise Development Foundation. I chose to work with Common Good for several reasons. First, I had read a great deal about the venture philanthropy model and was interested in seeing it from a more operational, less theoretical perspective. Second, I was attracted by the opportunity to work with Faithworks, a faith-based organization that is one of Common Good's partners. My interest in the ability of faith-based organizations to address issues of social and economic injustice originated in a class called "Faith, Politics, and Society" that I attended as a cross-registrant at the Kennedy School. Third, and probably most importantly, I met Kristin during Maine Trek in March and knew she would be an excellent mentor. She has tremendous experience in both the private and nonprofit sectors, so I felt that she could provide an important perspective for me, both in my summer assignment and in a larger sense as I consider my own career goals.

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Meredith Weenick, Home for Little Wanderers

The Nonprofit and Public Management Summer Fellowship enabled me to serve as a financial analyst for The Home for Little Wanderers, one of New England's oldest and largest social service agencies. The organization operates more than 35 distinct programs for children and families primarily in northeastern Massachusetts, ranging from prevention and early intervention programs, managed care and clinical services to adoption and foster care support, residential and special education facilities for children and adult care programs for people with mental disabilities. My major projects included creating revenue forecasting tools and analyzing staffing patterns to identify cost savings. Working directly with the Vice President for Finance, I created models and tools to help the organization streamline reporting and billing processes. I was also able to send time with program directors discussing my analysis of their individual programs' staffing patterns and designing ways to reduce expenses in that area.

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Naomi Weinberg, Low Cost Eyeglasses

Low Cost Eyeglasses is a social purpose organization that will develop and implement systems that provide eyeglasses to the one billion people in the developing world who need eyeglasses yet currently do not have them. Unlike existing eyeglasses that are difficult to purchase and very expensive, Low Cost Eyeglasses is developing eyeglasses that are inexpensive, accessible, and easy to purchase. We accomplish both low cost and availability through a product design that eliminates complexity and a channel design that reduces the need for optometrists. The principal activities of Low Cost Eyeglasses include: Low cost eyeglass technology development; Technology implementation in lesser developed countries; Establishment of distribution channels; Training. Low Cost Eyeglasses is the first winner in the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Business Plan Contest . After extensive research and planning, Low Cost Eyeglasses won the contest in May 2001. Neil Houghton, a classmate and section-mate, and I worked this summer to help make the dream and plan of Low Cost Eyeglasses become a reality. In addition to many of the large and small challenges that start-ups face, my major project this summer was to determine what entity structure (for profit or not for profit) best suits Low Cost Eyeglasses – through networking with others, intense business modeling, and speaking to legal counsel and other experts.

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