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In 2002, the Bush Administration launched the Hospital Quality Initiative, which was intended to improve quality through accountability and public disclosure and to "empower consumers with quality of care information to make more informed decisions about their health care, and encourage providers and clinicians to improve the quality of health care." To achieve the Administration's goals, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced that it would develop a program to survey patients' satisfaction to determine hospital quality. When Mel Hall, the CEO of Press Ganey, a leading healthcare performance measurement and improvement company, learned of CMS's proposal, he was concerned. The Administration seemed largely unaware of the existing market for patient satisfaction surveys, a market in which Press Ganey was intimately involved. This case studies how a private healthcare performance measurement company responds a government effort to improve quality reporting and standardize hospital surveys. It highlights the private company's decisions regarding both its business strategy as well as its potential to affect public policy

Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) transformed its philanthropic practice into a social venture capital practice in 1997 with a portfolio of nonprofit enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area. This case presents REDF's analysis of the changing needs of the nonprofit marketplace.

The executive director of the Asian Neighborhood Design (AND) attempts to quantify the potential financial and social return for investors in his nonprofit enterprise. AND seeks to raise $2.27 million. However, as a nonprofit organization, it cannot offer potential equity investors a share of future earnings, and it is not eligible for loans. The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund encourages AND to apply for a grant, but requires that the organization demonstrate that it is both operating efficiently and achieving its social goals. Using innovative tools including a true cost accounting framework and a social return on investment analysis, the director attempts to capture the fund's likely total return on investment. As the field of social enterprise continues to develop, such methods are increasingly important tools for managers and funders to measure real social and financial results.