Browse abstracts and ordering information for case studies written and published by faculty at Stanford GSB.
For publicly available cases in this collection, Harvard Business Impact and Ivey Publishing distribute in North America, and The Case Centre and IESE Publishing in Europe.
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In 1988, Paul Jones, a 32-year-old money manager, founded the philanthropic foundation Robin Hood with $3 million and a mission to fight poverty in New York. He invited two close friends, Peter Borish and Glenn Dubin, to serve as co-founders and recruited…
Susan Ford served as the president and cofounder of the Sand Hill Foundation, a family foundation that made grants to organizations that benefited people on the San Francisco Peninsula. Tom and Susan Ford established the foundation in 1995, reflecting…
In 1984, Stanford University husband-and-wife team Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner founded Cisco Systems. The company developed and commercialized products that enabled computers to communicate with one another. As networking took off, Cisco’s sales grew…
Established in 1992, the San Francisco-based McKay Foundation supported organizations that addressed income inequality and poverty. The McKay Foundation focused on developing long-term, community-based solutions to social and economic problems. Robert…
In January 2006, the PRI Makers Network and Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Center for Social Innovation sponsored the first annual Program-Related Investments (PRI) Conference in Palo Alto, California. The conference brought together 150…
Community Foundation Silicon Valley (“CFSV”) was founded in 1954 as the “Community Trust of Santa Clara County” with a broad mission—to help improve the community. It experienced explosive growth in the 1990s and 2000s with assets increasing more than 80…
Late Palo Alto industrialist William R. Hewlett, his wife, Flora Lamson Hewlett and their eldest son, Walter B. Hewlett, established the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (“Hewlett Foundation”) in 1966. The foundation’s guiding principle, as stated by…
In 1948, Jim Casey, one of United Parcel Service’s founders, established the Annie E. Casey Foundation with his siblings. The foundation’s mission was “to build better futures for disadvantaged children and their families in the United States” and to…
On September 30, 2004, approximately 250 practitioners and academics met at Stanford University to discuss the rapidly developing field of venture philanthropy. Venture philanthropy draws on lessons from the venture capital industry to help develop…
Investors in for-profit companies have clear measures of company performance in meeting their economic objectives. However, the effectiveness of investments in not-for-profit organizations is more difficult to measure, since a significant objective of…
This short paper introduces considerations in corporate philanthropy. It discusses possible motivations for corporate philanthropy, and the forms such philanthropy can take. It also introduces arguments for and against corporate philanthropy: is…
Philanthropy as an industry, with professionally managed organizations addressing the root causes of social problems, was developed in the United States. This paper traces is development from early colonial days through the formation of the first great…
Founded in 1969, Interplast was a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit organization that provided free reconstructive surgery for needy children and adults in developing nations. It partnered with local medical professionals to provide surgery and related care…
