In MBA programs, there are career switchers and there are career enhancers. Sandeep Shamasunder (MBA ’11) is a switcher. After working at IBM Global Business Services for five years, he arrived at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business last fall eager to reorient his work around economic development in Africa and Asia.
One of the first lessons Shamasunder learned is that today’s international development is about more than seeking government handouts or foundation funding. “I was a little surprised by the increased business focus,” he says. “It’s not just about helping people; it’s about creating a public private model and a sustainable situation where, eventually, no outside money will be required.”
Shamasunder says he has been excited to learn about these new economic models, such as Coca-Cola Enterprises’ clean water initiatives in Africa, which has long term benefits for the water-dependent bottling business as well as the environment. “I thought international development would be more like the Peace Corps,” he says, “but I can see this approach is much
more successful.”
Not so long ago, social enterprise was relatively unheard of in corporate America or in business school. The two were as different as Birkenstocks and wingtips, and if they mingled at all, it was perhaps a goodwill gesture from the corporate side with a few zeroes at the end. But today, the two cultures are coming together in a union that has proved advantageous for both.
Social enterprise — which encompasses social entrepreneurship, international development, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) — uses traditional business tools to solve social problems and promote change. It can take many forms, from reducing industrial waste to decreasing sodium intake to promoting urban agriculture. Although doing good in order to do well is not a new concept, recent trends show a deliberate focus on creating social value across corporate, government, and nonprofit sectors. Idea sharing and innovation among the sectors creates better-run nonprofits and more socially responsible
corporations.
Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business — with its proximity to federal agencies, lobbyists, nonprofits, and an increasing number of corporate headquarters; its Jesuit heritage and tradition of service; and its status among the country’s to microfinance. “Ninety percent of students who come out of Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business will go into business,” says Distinguished Professor of the Practice Bill Novelli, who co-founded public relations agency Porter Novelli and served as CEO of AARP. “They’ll be a CFO, CEO, COO — not necessarily directors of corporate responsibility. But the important thing is that they care about social value and make responsible management decisions that benefit their companies and society as a whole.”
Novelli, who joined the faculty full time in August, also has been president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, where he helped change public policies and limit tobacco companies’ marketing to children,
and executive vice president of CARE, the world’s largest private relief and development organization.
Students have always tended toward altruism and idealism, he says, but their commitment to making change has increased tremendously in the past decade. One example at Georgetown is Net Impact, a national organization of graduate students and alumni that focuses on using business skills to improve society. The Georgetown chapter, a charter member in 1993, is now one of the largest in the country and one of the largest student groups on campus.
“I think my generation as a whole is more aware of these issues because we’ve grown up with them,” says Net Impact chapter leader Katie Heffner (MBA ’11). The organization, which has 140 members, offers pro bono consulting to local nonprofits and has a board fellows program in which students act as nonvoting members of local nonprofit boards. Heffner serves as a fellow on the board of Kid Power, which works with underserved youth in Washington. Among her projects, she is writing the business plan for Veggie Time, a Kid Power program in which children grow their own vegetables, learn about nutrition, test recipes, and sell part of their harvest to local businesses.
Annual events include Net Impact Day, which features speakers and panels, and Net Impact Trek, during which students visit local companies that are active in social change.The organization also co-sponsored a Hoops for Haiti basketball tournament among MBA students in January.The event was planned in less than a week and raised more than $1,000.
Hilltop Consultants, the undergraduate counterpart to Net Impact, also provides consulting services to nonprofits. Every February, Hilltop hosts the Business Strategy Challenge, an intercollegiate undergraduate case competition founded at Georgetown. It is the only such competition with a nonprofit focus that deals with a current issue for the organization.Teams from across the country receive written cases and have 36 hours to prepare their solutions. Past clients have included the United Way Worldwide, the Academy for Learning Through the Arts (a charter school), and Keys, Inc., a liaison between hotels and homeless shelters.
Hilltop also has a couple mandatory hands-on events per semester. In the fall, members prepared food at D.C. Central Kitchen and assembled holiday literacy kits at early-childhood education nonprofit Jumpstart. “We already do the high-level, intellectual consulting work, so our members enjoy the hands-on work and enjoy seeing our impact,” says Hilltop President Renee Goldman (BSBA ’10), who founded her own nonprofit while she was in high school to promote music education in public schools.
Such hands-on service extends to other programs, as well. The Nonprofit Internship Fund provides financial support to MBA students who take unpaid or low paying internships between their first and second years. One student worked last summer at the Smithsonian Institution, where he surveyed employees at all Smithsonian museums about ways to raise money without charging admission. He analyzed the feedback, calculated the estimated financial return for various options, and created a presentation to the board of regents. In the end, one of his original suggestions was implemented.
Shamasunder, vice president of outreach for the fund, says there are typically 10 scholarships awarded, but last year the number rose to 17. It was the first time the money raised ($55,000, including a grant from the school) could not cover all the students drawn to these socially minded internships, he says.
Service-minded students also participated in the new MBA Service Day. In fall 2009, 250 first-year students spent a day of their orientation volunteering at five sites, including the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Operation USO, and Rock Creek Park. Another new program, Community Fellows, recognizes graduating MBA students who have dedicated 100 or more hours to community service between orientation and April 1 of their second year. Thirteen 2009 graduates were recognized at graduation last year, and that number is expected to rise for 2010 based on hours already logged.
Business Skills for Social Ills
Alan Andreasen arrived at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business in 1992, back when he was one of the few experts talking about social enterprise. The professor launched a social marketing class in 2003 and struggled to fill it with MBAs, finally getting about 20 students.
“Now I have 48,” says Andreasen, who has worked with the World Bank, USAID, the American Red Cross, and Habitat for Humanity International. “That’s really an indicator of interest.” He says students today, especially MBAs, are cognizant of an employer’s work ethic and social responsibility. “There’s a movement in this direction of wanting to work at a corporation that does more than make an awful lot of money for stockholders.”
Before coming to Georgetown, Heffner worked for The Cadmus Group, a company that consults with the Environmental Protection Agency. She worked on an asthma and secondhand smoke campaign and learned about the Energy Star environmental program. After that experience, she was drawn to the Georgetown McDonough School of Business’ focus on social responsibility. She says other schools offer social marketing through their public health programs, but she liked the idea of studying it in the context of business school. She is taking Andreasen’s social marketing course this spring.
“We talk about how you really can influence behavior change,” Heffner says. “What’s fascinating is that there’s no value proposition in it, and you have to create one.” She uses recycling as an example to which people can relate. “You’re not going to get any money for it. You don’t have anyone in your kitchen giving you a pat on the back when you recycle, so it’s creating this internal feeling: ‘I did a good thing.’” Whether it targets recycling, smoking, obesity, littering, or public transportation, social marketing uses conventional marketing tools to promote behavioral change, but Heffner knows it often takes a long time for people to embrace a new mindset.
Heffner has learned that when a company is doing good these days, it is a good business decision. Although some previous social acts might have been motivated by public relations, today companies see a clear connection between the bottom line and sustainability. Wal-Mart, for instance, has switched to energy-efficient lighting and more sustainable packaging. Both are good for the environment, but both also save the company millions each year. As Novelli wrote in a column in the fall 2009 issue of Georgetown Business, “It is not so much about doing good beyond the bottom line, but as part of the bottom line.”
“When you’re dealing with a business school audience, it doesn’t come from a nai?ve place,” says Leslie Payne (MBA ’06), who works for Arabella Advisors, a firm that helps families, individuals, institutions, and corporations evaluate social impact and develop effective philanthropic strategies. “Especially with issues like the climate, there’s a huge business opportunity there, and there’s going to be a huge market for solving it. Earlier, we were relegated to charity or dogooder-ism, but we now know it can also make you money.” Payne takes pride in making a difference, even in a for-profit field, by using her business skills to make non-profits more efficient. Shamasunder echoes her sentiment. “MBA education gives you the skills to approach management and finances and to really see how an organization is run,” he says. Whether the newest MBA graduates work at a nonprofit or for-profit organization, he believes they will bring a socially responsible attitude to their jobs. “A lot of people are interested in changing the way business is being done,” he says. “They want social change to be part of their job, wherever they end up.”
In Associate Professor Ed Soule’s Leadership and Business Ethics class, students can influence corporate America’s social impact even before they graduate. Through a program Soule developed over the course of the past five years, students critically analyze the CSR strategies and public disclosures of leading corporations. Senior managers from the companies work with students at the launch of a project, and at the end, students present their findings. Most recently, students had the opportunity to work with executives from Coca-Cola Enterprises.
“It’s a very valuable experience,” says Soule, who would like to create an elective that focuses solely on this work. “Some students have absolutely no interest in this subject, but after they do this, they see it’s not just a bunch of save-the-whales stuff — it’s serious business.” It is also a valuable experience for the companies. Students are a source of unbiased input and, as Soule explains, “Companies benefit from our diverse student body.”
A similar partnership came about with Cisco Systems after Jenny Bradley Heflin (BSBA ’03, MBA ’10) interned there last summer and talked about Soule’s course. Last fall, she led a tutorial team to evaluate Cisco’s CSR strategy, including a very lengthy CSR report. In the end, the team suggested Cisco weave CSR into its annual report — a growing trend — and also mocked up a shorter CSR communication device.
“The Cisco executives were elated with the results,” Soule says. “I’m confident that many of our recommendations will be implemented. There’s no better way for students to learn about managing the social and environmental impacts of a global company.”
The Seeds of Social Enterprise
Last spring, before Rahul Pasarnikar (MBA ’11) decided to enroll at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, he talked to Novelli on the phone about the future of social enterprise at Georgetown.
“I was on the fence about coming to school,” says Pasarnikar, who had worked as a consultant for the previous 13 years. “Initially, I was disappointed that Georgetown did not have a formal social enterprise initiative that could potentially cross multiple disciplines. I felt that to truly resolve social issues in a systemic way, solutions needed to cross sectors.” When he heard Novelli envisioned just such an initiative at the school, disappointment gave way to opportunity.
Today, Pasarnikar is president of Net Impact and leads a five-student team exploring opportunities for a social enterprise initiative. An increasing number of top universities recognize the need for similar initiatives to remain competitive in the face of growing student demand.
“It’s still very early, but we want to put together a strategic plan of what an initiative might involve,” Pasarnikar says. “The goal is to figure out what kind of role business plays in social enterprise.”
Novelli, the faculty sponsor for this largely student-driven effort, says it will incorporate other areas of the university, such as foreign service, social justice, and public policy. He envisions three components: teaching, research, and service. The research area proves the most challenging for many working in this field: How do you measure behavioral change? When are people most receptive to suggestions of change? What is the social return on investment? Is there a way to measure quality-of-life improvements arising from social enterprise?
“It’s very hard to measure,” Novelli says. “But it’s important to do so, and it’s much more than measuring profit and loss. Having this initiative housed at the university, with all its qualitative and quantitative skills, will help us understand these questions.”
Novelli would like to see a two-way bridge in business leadership, too. “We’ve always had people going from the forprofit world to the nonprofit world,” he says. “When we also have people going from nonprofit to for-profit and they’re accepted for their strategies, we’ll have a strong cadre of people who are out there making change.”
©2009 Georgetown University
