Fuqua Focus: The Center for The Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE)

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FUQUAFOCUS: CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP (CASE)

The business of bettering the world

For fifteen years, CASE has prepared business leaders who want to make a social impact.

FUQUAFOCUS: CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP (CASE)

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By Bridgette A. Lacy | Photography by Alex Boerner

onathan Woodward’s passion to change educational opportunities for minorities is taking shape at Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers, better known as TROSA, a comprehensive program in Durham that helps people recover from addiction.

Woodward is observing a lesson in how to turn former addicts into productive, recovering individuals. “Their system is interesting,” he says. “They bring folks who struggle with addiction and put

them to work so they can heal and create a new life for themselves…. Much of TROSA’s revenue comes from businesses they started. They have a thrift store and a moving company, where people can learn vocational skills and earn money.”

The trip to TROSA is part of Day in Durham, an annual pilgrimage for firstyear M.B.A. students like Woodward who come to the Fuqua School of Business. It’s when students begin to understand how their business skills can be used for social, environmental, and economic impact.

Woodward, a former English and histo-

A little help Lauren Gardner M.B.A. ’06

(see page 75) calls Fuqua’s loan assistance program an “impact multiplier.”

Now named the Rex and Ellen Adams Loan Assistance Program, after Fuqua’s former dean and his wife, the program provides financial assistance, in the form of loan forgiveness awards, to qualifying Duke M.B.A. “Thank you for investing in me so alumni who work in the that I can invest in this community.” nonprofit or public service sectors. It was originally launched with a gift from the Daytime M.B.A. Class of 2001; during the Duke Forward campaign, the F.M. Kirby Foundation made a $2.5 million gift to endow and re-name the program.

Alumni are eligible to receive assistance annually toward both federal and private loans.

With that kind of help, students pursuing careers in the social sector are more interested in attending Fuqua, and graduates can choose careers that align their skills with their passions. Gardner, a recipient, is grateful.

“Thank you for investing in me so that I can invest in this community. Thank you for making sure the Loan Assistance Program has been endowed so that someone right now who is in the Peace Corps, or working in an inner-city school, or working for a start-up social enterprise can be confident that Fuqua is not only feasible, but a place that will support them for the long run as they invest in their communities after graduation.”

For more information, http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/financial-aid/loan-assistance-program/.

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ry teacher from South Central Los Angeles, is one of several recipients of Fuqua’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) scholarship.

The scholarship is awarded to individuals with social-sector backgrounds who are looking to acquire business skills for use in their pursuit of social impact.

This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of CASE, an award-winning research and education center based at Fuqua. It was founded by the father of social entrepreneurship education, Greg Dees, and Beth Anderson, a former student of Dees and currently the executive director of the Hill Center, an educational nonprofit that serves students who struggle academically. “CASE has been one of the crown jewels in the business school,” says Fuqua dean Bill Boulding.

Boulding reflected that Greg Dees had a strong belief that businesses that were trying to create a positive social impact could also adhere to the same market standards of excellence. “You don’t need a totally different playbook for social impact. You need a commitment to making a difference in lives through your company,” Boulding says.

“At Fuqua, we strongly believe business can be a force for good and solve tough challenges in society in ways that government or other entities can’t,” says Boulding. “It’s possible to reasonably sustain a business by making it profitable while improving lives. Nonprofits and other social sector organizations can use business principles to achieve greater impact as well.”

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ees, who died in December 2013, knew that people suffering from various ills and conditions in the world needed solutions right away.

And he believed that a center like CASE

“You don't need a totally different playbook for social impact.”

AROUND TOWN: Above, top row left then clockwise, first-year M.B.A. students saw ELF cars at Organic Transit, visited the Durham Hotel, and explored Fullsteam Brewery, owned by Sean Lilly Wilson M.B.A., M.P.P. ’00, during the Day in Durham foray.

had the power to accelerate the pace of change.

Erin Worsham, CASE’s executive director, says that CASE does just that. The center trains hundreds of students each year through classes and extracurricular activities. And CASE’s work doesn’t stop

in the halls of Fuqua. The goal is to make the entire social impact field better.

“We think of ourselves as a hub for research, teaching, and practitioner engagement in social impact,” Worsham says.

“Over the years we have educated thousands of students and have also worked

with thousands of nonprofits, for-profits, government agencies, funders, impact investors, and researchers to develop and share best practices and tools. We want to empower leaders and organizations to change the world and to do so faster, better, and at greater scale.”

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FUQUAFOCUS: CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP (CASE)

Social entrepreneurs have noticed.

“I don’t think there’s been a more important academic institution for social entrepreneurship than CASE,” says Sally Osberg, president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, which invests in and connects social entrepreneurs and innovators to help them solve the world’s most pressing problems.

“It’s the one people turn to. It’s the one that was actually launched by Greg Dees.

And it’s no accident that it’s now coming up on fifteen years, that even when its founder is no longer, sadly, very sadly,

here to guide it, that the people he put in place, the people he inspired, the academics who have really flocked to CASE should be ensuring that it’s poised for its next fifteen years, too.

“So, in terms of research, in terms of contributing to this field, in terms of offering both practical and really smart counsel to students, CASE is really the institution that sets the agenda and sets the pace for us all.”

For Loree Lipstein M.B.A. ’15, CASE and Fuqua are interwoven. Lipstein is the founder and principal of Thread Strate-

Monty Montoya M.B.A. ’03 works to solve real problems. In 1997, Montoya joined an organization called SightLife, a nonprofit that recovers and processes corneas for transplant. “The impact of restoring people’s sight is literally lifesaving,” Montoya says. Giving people the gift of sight generally translates into making them self-sufficient—able to go to school, to read, and to work.

When Montoya first came to Fuqua he had ten years of technical experience but lacked the leadership, business, and marketing skills to scale his organization. He has worked closely with CASE, interacting with the team as a student and then later participating in CASE programs as an alumnus. “CASE has really set the standard nationwide and worldwide to help social ventures scale and have impact,” he says. “It’s allowed me the inspiration and knowledge to grow SightLife’s annual budget from $1 million to $45 million.”

Before connecting with CASE, SightLife provided about 700 people a year with corneal transplants.

This year, more than 30,000 people will receive new corneas.

But Montoya was not satisfied. With the skills and inspiration he gained at Fuqua, Montoya and his team developed a plan —as he says, borrowing a phrase from former Duke Rebecca Mill

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gies, a fundraising consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., that helps nonprofits and social enterprises raise the funds needed to advance their missions. She assists them with their fundraising, their organizing, and ways to measure their impact to prove to funders their programs work. Their causes include supporting literacy, solving clean-water issues, assisting adults with disabilities, and mentoring children through college.

Lipstein says she was attracted to the general business foundation Fuqua provided, coupled with CASE’s attention to

President Terry Sanford, an “outrageous ambition”—to eliminate corneal blindness worldwide by 2040.

But as Montoya and his team work tirelessly to eliminate corneal blindness, they knew they needed to do more. One of the challenges of transplants is a simple matter of supply and demand. There are only 150,000 corneas available annually from organ donors, but more than 10 million people need the sight-restoring surgery.

To accelerate and scale their work, Montoya led his team at SightLife in launching a new for-profit subsidiary, SightLife Surgical, which is focused on raising capital and driving innovations in research, products, prevention, and policy.

“How do we get patients treatment better and faster? How do we make an impact so they don’t need transplants?” he asks.

CASE executive director Erin Worsham called Montoya a great example of how the CASE team is preparing leaders and organizations to change the world.

“He has an insatiable drive and passion, truly understands the complexity of the problem he seeks to solve, and is using his business skills—regardless of whether we are talking about a nonprofit or a for-profit structure—to drive to scale,” she said.

In business, to scale typically means to grow, adding more locations, or hiring more people. But at CASE, scale does not necessarily mean building a bigger organization.

“Achieving scale is not about budget size or number of locations,” Worsham said. “When we are talking about social problems, scale is about the amount of social change we can achieve. Monty is not satisfied with tens of thousands of corneas transplanted each year, or even millions.

He wants to transform the entire system and eliminate the problem. Scaling social impact is not an academic exercise; it’s real people with real problems. And we are thrilled that we have been a part of Monty’s journey to achieving impact at scale.” n

the social sector. CASE’s programs made her keenly aware of the nuances of the social sector. The hands-on learning and start-up support offered through CASE gave her the opportunity to refine and implement her business venture.

“I came from a purely nonprofit background,” Lipstein says. “And I started a for-fee business that works with nonprofits. I am now able to come at it using a business lens. I’m able to use business constructs and strategies to help my clients.”

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ver the years, CASE has continued to innovate and expand its work to stay at the cutting edge of social impact. One way CASE has changed is the addition of impact investment—the practice of investing for social and environmental impact as well as financial return—as one of the center’s focus areas. Established in 2011, CASE founded the globally recognized Initiative on Impact Investing (CASE i3), which includes a two-year student fellowship program, research partnerships, and innovative tools such as CASE Smart Impact SMART Capital, an online START: M.B.A. toolkit for entrepre- student chats neurs seeking impact with former Durham mayoral investment.

CASE has also led candidate and efforts such as the Blackspace Social Entrepreneur- founder Pierce ship Accelerator at Freelon.

“I don’t think there’s been a more important academic institution for social entrepreneurship than CASE.” Duke (SEAD), a global-health scaling accelerator, funded by USAID. The ventures raised more than $56 million and improved health outcomes for more than 30 million beneficiaries during their time in the SEAD program.

After his Day in Durham visit, M.B.A. student Woodward wonders out loud about running a high-quality teacher-placement service that would match school districts with the right teacher for their environment. Or maybe bring in

master teachers to train new hires.

Before enrolling at Fuqua, he worked in various positions in education from program management for a national teacher policy-advocacy group (Teach Plus) to talent acquisition at the largest charter-school network in Los Angeles (Alliance College-Ready Public Schools).

He wants to help organizations in the urban-education sector create more sustainable business models and talent-management practices.

“I want to make changes so that students have access to high-quality education,” he says. Woodward says that education nonprofits depend heavily on state grants and wealthy contributors. “I like the idea of creating an organization that can sustain itself, like TROSA.” He’s just at the start of his CASE journey, but he’s sure his coursework and experiential-learning opportunities with CASE will guide him in implementing best practices.

“The thing I know above anything else is I want to make a social impact,” says Woodward. n DUKE MAGAZINE

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FUQUAFOCUS: CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP (CASE)

FAC U LT Y

PR OFILE

Helping to spread a good idea

CASE’s faculty director Cathy Clark is a leader in social entrepreneurship.

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athy Clark’s aha moment came more than twenty years “CASE is about the discipline of what business principles can ago, when she had lunch with Lloyd N. Morrisett, add to the pursuit of social impact,” Clark says. “What can you one of the creators of the groundbreaking children’s learn about marketing? How can finance propel a good idea fortelevision show Sesame Street. Clark was working in ward faster? How do you take good ideas and grow them? How communications technology at the Aspen Institute in Washing- do you grow innovation? How do you figure out if it’s working? ton when Morrisett, the president of the Markle Foundation, How do you attract people to help you?” explained he was a venture capitalist.

Recently, Clark served as the lead author of CASE’s online Clark, now CASE’s faculty director, didn’t know what he was learning series, CASE Smart Impact Capital. She also coauthored, talking about. along with CASE Executive Director Erin Worsham and DirecMorrisett explained that there were financial institutions that tor of Programs Robyn Fehrman, the Scaling Pathways series, a partnership among CASE, the Skoll Founinvested in growing companies that want dation, USAID’s Global Development Lab, to make a social impact. “I thought this and Mercy Corps that explores strategies to was amazing—how you can use money to solve widespread, seemingly intractable sobuild enterprises,” says Clark, who, at that cial problems. point, had only a bachelor’s degree with a She was named, in 2014, one of the major in French literature. top-twenty women in the U.S. working in Clark quit her job and moved to New philanthropy, social innovation, and civic York to find out how Morrisett was able to engagement. Clark has been an active piuse new technology to solve educational issues. She wanted to see how he was able to oneer, researcher, educator, and consultant prepare children for kindergarten by using for over twenty-five years in the fields of commercial television production elements impact investing and social entrepreneurship. She also founded and directs CASE and techniques to teach children their A-Bi3, the Initiative on Impact Investing, and C’s. co-leads the Social Entrepreneurship AcShe was a part of the generation that, with celerator at Duke (SEAD), an accelerator many of her classmates in inner-city Philadelphia and the rest of the country, mastered working to scale impact of global health reading and arithmetic by watching Big Bird ventures in India and East Africa. and Elmo. “As a teenager, I “When Dees started recall being a counselor at CASE, social entrepre“CASE is about the discipline of what business neurship was not well summer camp putting kids principles can add to the pursuit of social impact.” understood," Clark says. in front of Sesame Street on “He explained what it TV, to complement the was. He basically said this is not a hobby, this is a discipline. We books we were reading to them.

“I was in awe,” she says. “How do I learn to do that?” She can see patterns. These problems are urgent for the people who wanted to master the knowledge of taking a good idea, testing it are suffering. We need to do everything we can to help the perin a small enterprise, and then sharing it to address the needs of son trying to read or to provide food for people in a food desert. the masses. This became her first lesson in how to scale a project. Our team lived and breathed that sense.”

“What’s happened in the past fifteen years?” Clark asks, rhetorMost ideas stay really small, but Clark says she wanted to examine how to reach more people with a good idea. Encouraged ically. “There are CASE networks now around the world. There

by Morrisett, Clark eventually earned an M.B.A. at Columbia are university programs helping them grow. At CASE, we are University. Then she returned to Columbia to teach for nine focused at the graduate level on really going in-depth in the discipline of businesses scaling up a good idea. When we talk about years before coming to Duke.

Clark was recruited by Greg Dees, the founder of CASE, in scale, we are not talking about ideation but more about when 2007. She started as an adjunct professor teaching social entre- people hit a wall. When your enterprise is not the shiny new preneurship. Dees and Clark had compatible views of the field, thing, and you hit a roadblock. When you need to hire a mandespite coming from different backgrounds. She came with a ager or the environment has changed.

“That’s where the business skills are needed. How do social enNew York network of for-profit enterprises interested in making a social impact. Meanwhile, Dees had worked in rural Kentucky terprises pivot smartly? They have to pivot toward impact. And that takes a different level of skills.” n with nonprofits wanting to do the same.

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ALUM N I

P ROFILE

A striver now helping strivers

Discovering CASE helped Lauren Gardner put her non-traditional business background to good use.

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hen Lauren Gardner M.B.A. ’06 was living in a fishing village in St. Lucia, serving as a Peace Corps volunteer for small-business development, she realized she lacked some of the concrete skills needed to make a big social impact.

Gardner began researching M.B.A. programs to gain those skills. “The more I read about Fuqua’s reputation as a challenging, team-oriented program with a cutting-edge commitment to social entrepreneurship, I knew that I wanted to apply,” she says.

Gardner is now the chief operating officer at the Emily Krzyzewski Center, a nonprofit organization that serves as a hub to help propel academically focused, low-income K-12 students toward success in college.

But she credits CASE with providing her that opportunity.

“I’m not sure I would have been accepted at Fuqua with“We went from an out CASE,” Gardner says, exempty building to plaining that she was a non-traan organization that ditional M.B.A. candidate. Her is changing the face work experience was not fiof college access in nance, marketing, engineering, or business.

Durham—opening But after reading about Greg our doors to any Dees, the founder of CASE, she high-school student knew Fuqua had the best prowho wants to go to fessor in the country for teachcollege and working ing social entrepreneurship.

Gardner had a bachelor’s with more than 700 of science in foreign service elementary, middle, with a focus on international high-school, and economics from Georgetown college students University. While she benefited from scholarship and family this year alone.” support for her undergraduate degree, for her graduate studies she only had a readjustment allowance from the Peace Corps to start her life in Durham.

Fuqua’s Loan Assistance Program, which provides financial support to graduates who take jobs in the social sector, offered a path.

“I had this safety net on the other end that meant I didn’t need a

big corporate job in order to pay off these loans. I wanted to take a job that matched my passion and to use my skills for a nonprofit.”

During her first summer at Fuqua, Gardner found that opportunity at the Emily K Center. It was 2005, and the center was operating out of a trailer behind the construction site for its new building. Outfitted in a hard hat, Gardner assisted in needs assessments, developed marketing materials, and helped create programs.

By Gardner’s second year at Fuqua, the bricks had been laid. Construction on the Emily K Center was completed in February 2006, and by the end of that spring semester, the center had found money to pay for an operational staffer. Gardner started working full time that summer.

Back then, there was one program and thirty-eight kids. The program, Pioneer Scholars, was designed to help elementary and middle-school students prepare for high school and college.

Now, the center offers four programs, including Scholars to College and Scholars on Campus, and works with students from first grade through college. And last year when some seniors in the Scholars to College program realized their classmates also needed support to get to college, the center started the Game Plan: College program to help even more high-school students.

“We went from an empty building to an organization that is changing the face of college access in Durham—opening our doors to any high-school student who wants to go to college and working with more than 700 elementary, middle, high-school, and college students this year alone,” says Gardner.

Last May, thirty seniors in the center’s intensive Scholars to College program walked across the stage in their caps and gowns and announced where they would be attending college. “Most of these students will attend college on a full scholarship and graduate with little or no debt,” she says. Two students from the Scholars to College program are attending Duke this fall. They’re both the first in their families to go to college.

As she continues her work, Gardner keeps showing how her education has made her a premier teammate. Just ask the coach.

“We have personally benefited at the Emily K Center from the top-notch business education Lauren received at Fuqua,” says Mike Krzyzewski, chair and founder of the center. “We are so grateful she had the opportunity to join our team.” n DUKE MAGAZINE

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CASE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Preparing leaders & organizations to change the world through: Education, Thought Leadership, Practitioner Engagement

I N S P I R I N G

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T O U C H I N G

T H E

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2174 643 193 $56M+ 1.8M 1945 1st year MBAs participating in Day in Durham

in loan assistance funding provided to alumni working for nonprofits and government agencies

500+ Attendees at the 2017 Sustainable Business & Social Impact (SBSI) conference

Students in Fuqua on Board assisting area nonprofits

Students receiving summer internship funding

Amount of capital raised by global health social ventures in our Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD) program since entering

Duke students in CASE courses

29,910 miles traveled studying social enterprises for the Scaling Pathways series

S O M E

Top 5 social impact center

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75 Net Promoter Score for our Smart Impact Capital online learning platform

A C O L A D E S

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Ashoka Innovation Awards

2016

Outstanding Specialty Center winner Learn more at www.CASEatDuke.org

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