Talented, passionate leaders choose the Haas School of Business to get their MBAs and to learn to use their skills to solve our toughest social problems.
The Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership (CNPL) at Berkeley-Haas prepares students to have social impact across sectors and throughout their lives. Each year, hundreds of Haas MBAs participate on community boards, consult to nonprofit organizations, and get the training they need to solve the kinds of vexing challenges we’ve yet to conquer. Expert faculty – like Paul Jansen, who founded McKinsey & Company’s social sector consulting practice – are in the classroom and in the field to prepare Haas leaders to change the world.
Destiny Arts Center, in Oakland, has benefited from the work of Berkeley-Haas students through eight years in the Berkeley Board Fellows program. Destiny Arts Center uses dance, theater and martial arts to help youth counter very tough realities – like rape and gang violence. The enclosed picture shows the vitality and optimism that Destiny Arts fosters through their work.
You can ensure our ability to serve organizations like Destiny Arts by making a gift to support CNPL and Berkeley-Haas today. CNPL is 100% self supported – through earned revenue and gifts like yours.
A gift of $250 will support one nonprofit in the Berkeley Board Fellows program.
A gift of $500 will help us train a student to serve as a Berkeley Board Fellow.
A gift of $1,000 will help us assess the impact of a Berkeley Board Fellows project.
Event: Impact Speaker Series: Doug Rauch, founder of The Daily Table and former president of Trader Joe’s, co-hosted by The Center for Responsible Business Date: Thursday, February 20th, 2014 Location: Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
Between 30-40% of food produced in the US is wasted. Meanwhile, 49 million Americans struggle regularly with hunger. The Daily Table, a new nonprofit opening in Massachusetts this spring, aims to turn these two wrongs into a right. It will sell fresh-cooked, healthy meals at competitive fast food prices, in a neighborhood where such options are scarce. It will use produce donated by grocery stores due to cosmetic defects or slightly passed expiry dates—produce that is still nutritious and edible but is currently being sent to the landfill by the ton.
Doug Rauch, founder of The Daily Table and former president of Trader Joe’s, shared his experiences and advice from the early days of starting a mission-driven business.
After “graduating” from Trader Joe’s 5 years ago, Doug searched for a way to use his knowledge from his career and apply it to something he was passionate about. He became apart of a Harvard Fellowship that asked successful professionals who were nearing the end of their careers, to tackle a significant social ill at scale. After reflecting on which social issue bothered him the most, it finally dawned on him: “how is it possible that 1 out of 6 Americans is hungry” in one of the richest countries that spends billions of dollars on agriculture and food production?
Doug laid out 6 steps to starting a mission-driven business, based on his own journey of starting The Daily Table.
“If you’re going to try to tackle a problem, know the problem,” Doug advised. He realized the problem for hunger in America cannot be solved by filling stomachs because they are already filled – but with cheap junk calories. The real problem is bringing affordable nutrition to 50 million Americans.
Once the problem is understood, you must question why the problem is not being addressed. Doug discovered that there are plenty of food banks, but many people who qualify for food stamps are embarrassed to use these services because it’s a question of dignity.
“You are either innovating or you’re going to die.” It is easy for any organization to become complacent as time goes on; however, in order to be successful, one must keep innovating to stay ahead of the game.
Get your story right. Narratives are crucial because they matter to the people the organization is trying to reach. With the story, it’s necessary to address why people should care and what makes the issue urgent.
Reel in your initial funders (this is mostly applicable to nonprofits): Fundraising is an extremely competitive marketplace in the nonprofit world because the funders get to decide whether the organization has a right to exist. If you’re going to stick to a nonprofit model, “you have to break the nonprofit silos and rise above the competition” to form [strategic] partnerships.”
Have a business plan and execute it well by engaging the right people.
In addition to Doug Rauch, both of the founders of Feeding Forward, a UC Berkeley-born organization formed to help solve the issue of local hunger, were also present at the event to share how they are approaching the same social issue. The organization uses technology to connect those with excess food to those who need it through the use of a mobile application, thus “streamlining the process of food recovery and donation”. Thus far, the venture has successfully recovered 420,000 pounds of excess edible food donations, which has generated enough meals to feed over 355,000 individuals.
Doug Rauch speaks to the idea of sustainability in the nonprofit world due to the extreme competitiveness in the nonprofit market:
Community Partner Spotlight: Alameda Point Collaborative
Alameda Point Collaborative (apcollaborative.org) is a supportive housing community that was founded in 1999 to combat poverty and homelessness. Operating within the local community, APC began by transforming military housing on the former Alameda Naval Station into supportive housing communities. APC provides 500 formerly homeless residents, including more than 300 youth, safety and stability with a home to live. In addition to providing shelter, the organization focuses on providing job training skills and mental health counseling by trained professionals to encourage development. APC places a special focus on the youth of its community to ensure the future can overcome the drastic effects of poverty and homelessness. Emphasizing education as the core indicator of success, APC helps youth learn about health, nutrition, and horticulture.
Ever year, as a part of orientation week, first-year full-time Haas MBA students spend half a day providing community service at Alameda Point Collaborative.
Berkeley – Haas MBAs attended Challenge 4 Charity’s final event – Sports Weekend at Stanford on the weekend of April 19th. Year round, Haas’s C4C team competes with eight other West Coast business schools through volunteering and fundraising to support Special Olympics and other family-related charities. This year Haas accrued a total of 2000 volunteer hours across about 500 MBAs. As a whole, the 9 West Coast business schools raised $700,000 to support Special Olympics.
At Sports Weekend, the teams compete in 28 athletic and sporting competitions as a collaborative and fun event to culminate the year’s efforts and award the winners. Golf, basketball, softball, football, soccer, tennis, volleyball, and ultimate frisbee are only a few among the several competing activities that were held, not to mention parties throughout the weekend. USC’ Marshall School of Business was announced the overall winner that weekend, with a total of 6000 volunteer hours and $180,000 in fundraising money, while Stanford won the athletic competition.
Philanthropy, and specifically, strategic philanthropy, is a topic finding its way into increasing numbers of disciplines in universities around the world. The purpose of this workshop is to inspire and prepare instructors worldwide to teach an experiential undergraduate class in strategic philanthropy, and to provide resources and a professional network to support their course development.
Dr. Nora Silver will deliver a workshop on Berkeley-Haas’ Cal Strategic Philanthropy undergraduate class, a course initially designed by students and winning a Big Ideas @ Berkeley curricular award. Each of the last three Springs, the class has received $10,000 from the Learning by Giving Foundation. The class researches and decides how that money will create the greatest social impact in the San Francisco Bay Area. Students indeed learn by giving about personal and group values, group decision-making, social issues, grantmaking criteria, nonprofit assessment, social impact, and the landscape of philanthropy.
Destiny Arts Center, in Oakland, has benefited from the work of Berkeley-Haas students through eight years in the Berkeley Board Fellows program. Destiny Arts Center uses dance, theater and martial arts to help youth counter very tough realities – like rape and gang violence. The enclosed picture shows the vitality and optimism that Destiny Arts fosters through their work.
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