Can the models used to manage in the private sector be adapted to help nonprofits operate more effectively and strategically?
Last November, 55 leading experts — both practitioners and scholars — came to HBS for 3 days to examine this topic through the Social Enterprise Research Forum (SERF) on Nonprofit Strategy. While one-fourth of the participants were practitioners — leaders of foundations, nonprofits, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that included The Nature Conservancy, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Family Health International — the remainder reflected a diverse cross-section of academics from the fields of sociology, politics, science, economics, business, and public affairs representing more than a dozen top national universities.
The program was divided into six sessions (Strategy Drivers; Philanthropic, Government, and Commercial Funding; Strategy and Collaboration in the Nonprofit Sector; Going to Scale; Strategy and Structure in Multi-Site Nonprofits; and Strategy Measurement in the Nonprofit Sector) that each focused on a central theme of importance in nonprofit strategy and consisted of three to four presentations followed by discussion facilitated by HBS faculty members.
At the conclusion of SERF, organizers and participants agreed that the conference papers and discussions had led to some significant, new insights about nonprofit strategy. "Nonprofits and NGOs face a host of complex problems that are unique to their organizations," said V. Kasturi Rangan, the Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at HBS and lead organizer of the gathering. "This forum allowed academics to explore the richness of the issues. And it was both helpful and reassuring for the practitioners to have their management concerns taken seriously."
HBS Senior Lecturer Allen Grossman, a co-organizer of the conference, believes that SERF made headway in advancing the conversation about the ways nonprofits benefit from employing private sector practices. "Momentum is beginning to build for rethinking how nonprofit leaders manage their organizations. As more leaders see the potential for enhancing social impact by changing management practices, more will get on the bandwagon. That's why we're considering another conference as early as 2001. SERF got the dialogue started, but we need to build on our work."
Another major outcome of SERF will be the publishing of papers presented during the conference. While a number of periodicals — including the Harvard Business Review — have expressed interest in featuring some of the SERF research findings, two leading nonprofit journals plan to issue special editions consisting solely of papers from the forum. Nonprofit Management Leadership and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly are currently working with the SERF authors to prepare articles for publication in two expanded issues next year.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly editor and University of Washington professor Stephen Rathgeb Smith says, "SERF focused scholarly attention on many key issues facing nonprofits today. By placing the conference papers into a special edition of the journal, we are getting information out to scholars who can build upon it for further research, and practitioners who can utilize the papers to improve the practices of their own organizations."