How Do Nonprofits Use Cash Windfalls? Evidence from $5B in Unrestricted Donations
By: Jennifer Walsh
2025 | Faculty Research
No One Left Behind (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, Max Hancock and David Lane
March 2025 | Faculty Research
No One Left Behind (D)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, Max Hancock and David Lane
March 2025 | Faculty Research
No One Left Behind (C)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard, Max Hancock and David Lane
March 2025 | Faculty Research
Our faculty provide education and expertise rooted in real-world experience, linking theory and practice to shape business practice and train business leaders.
Expanding its early focus on helping nonprofits operate more efficiently to the emerging space of social enterprises and the challenges of measuring social impact, the HBS faculty has developed a body of knowledge that encompasses leadership, strategy, and governance of mission-driven organizations across the spectrum, from entrepreneurial ventures to more established firms.
Since its inception, the Social Enterprise Initiative has explored the role of business in creating social value. Today, SEI continues to examine the challenges and opportunities in harnessing the power of the markets to create both economic and social value.
In 2003, HBS launched an MBA elective course focused on entrepreneurship in education reform and cofounded the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) in collaboration with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This multiyear research project focuses on the management levers needed to create and sustain high-performing K–12 public school districts in the United States. These efforts have resulted in more than 30 case studies focused on adapting and applying management concepts within urban public school systems to drive improved performance and on using entrepreneurial strategies to effect systemic change in K–12 education.
Through teaching, research and engagement with practitioners and alumni, we are critically examining questions such as: What is the purpose of investing for impact? What return profiles are realistic? How do different strategies actually create social value? How is and how should social value be defined and measured? What does it mean in practice to be an impact investor?
