Case Studies

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 2000, the Rural Development Institute (RDI) decided to enter India. This case describes the modifications that RDI made to its model to address the unique aspects of the situation in India, and the initial indicators of success.

In 1999, Eli and Edythe Broad established the Broad Education Foundation on the area of Kindergarten through 12th (K-12) public education reform. By 2004, the Broads had committed nearly $500 million to the education foundation. While many educational…

In 1999, eBay’s first president and entrepreneur Jeff Skoll founded the Skoll Foundation. When eBay went public in 1998, Skoll gained sizeable wealth overnight and decided to actively engage in philanthropy. Through his foundation, Skoll sought to fund…

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks, the New York Community Trust (“the Trust”) and the United Way of New York City (“UWNYC”) collaborated to create the September 11th Fund (“the Fund”). The Fund’s mission was meeting the…

In 2000, Jed Emerson founded the Center for Blended Value, a think tank based in Colorado that promoted the concept of “blended value” investments. Emerson applied the concept of blended value to criticize the traditionally impermeable wall between…

This case is the companion to SI-87A. It reveals what decision Unitus leaders made regarding whether to create a debt or equity fund to expand the capital the company could provide to its microfinance partners. It also provides updated information…

Established in the mid 1970s, microfinance provided tiny loans to poor families to help them start of expand small businesses. Thirty years later, the practice had helped more than 80 million people to lift themselves out of extreme poverty and grown into…

In 1972, Robert Wood Johnson, who built Johnson & Johnson into the world’s largest health and medical care products company, founded the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Its mission was improving the health and health care of all Americans. The foundation…

Acumen Fund was founded in 2001 to provide modest amounts of capital, together with business expertise, to help build thriving enterprises that would serve large numbers of poor people. In 2004, Acumen Fund invested in the Series B round of WaterHealth…

In 1913, Benjamin Altman made a capital stock investment (the stock was from his department store B. Altman & Co.) to create the Altman Foundation. Since that time, the foundation has both honored Mr. Altman’s vision of serving New York City’s…

In October 2005, in an auditorium filled to capacity in Bentonville, Arkansas, Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s president and CEO, made the first speech in the history of Wal-Mart to be broadcast to the company’s 1.6 million associates (employees) in all of its 6…

The Global Fund for Women (“Global Fund”) was a funding intermediary that made grants to seed, support and strengthen women’s rights groups outside the United States. Global Fund grantees worked to provide women with economic opportunities and…

The Rural Defense Institute (RDI) was established in the early 1970s to alleviate poverty by securing land rights for the world’s rural poor. The organization had achieved impressive results through research, reform design, policy advocacy, and…

Case study is a supplement to the A case, to be read in class after students have read the A case and discussed the A case. The B case is an update and discusses what happened after the San Francisco Foundation decided to bring the issue of the Beryl Buck…