This case invites students to grapple with the dilemmas faced by Laura Lopez, the new Executive Director of a Puerto Rican educational advocacy NGO called Sapientis. Six months ago, Sapientis gained national visibility when its national coalition for educational reform and excellence (CECE) achieved a breakthrough by gaining government support for major educational reform. But, in the ensuing months, a variety of events have raised questions about how serious that commitment will be in practice.

In 2000, Oxfam America, an international relief and development organization, launched itself on a bold new course. A small but respected agency, it had devoted itself for three decades to supporting "partner" organizations in developing countries throughout the world, funding a variety of grassroots activities. Now, under the leadership of its president, Raymond Offenheiser, Oxfam America had joined with eleven other Oxfams worldwide to become a "global campaigning force" that would focus on challenging the policies and practices of governments and corporations that harmed the poor. The new initiative was in keeping with Offenheiser's belief that it was time for the international development community to move beyond the "welfare" model of service delivery and embrace an approach that took aim at structural impediments that kept impoverished people from improving their lot. But the commitment to becoming a global campaigning organization would pose new challenges for Offenheiser and his senior managers. Within Oxfam America, the campaign work put new pressures on the organization's staff and resources. Some staff members, particularly those who worked with partner organizations in the field, found the campaign work onerous and, in some cases, irrelevant, and worried that Oxfam America's grassroots work in its regional offices was losing its primacy in the agency. HKS Case Number 1738.0

In the late 1990s, the leadership of Neighborhood Conservation Services (NCS) of Barberton, Ohio--a nonprofit housing rehabilitation organization founded two decades earlier to help reverse the decline of this aging industrial city--found its once popular mission had suddenly become politically controversial. The long unassailable idea of using public funds to target low-interest loans to lower-income homeowners was being questioned by elected officials in the city of 28,000, officials concerned that limiting loans to those of low-income--in conjunction with a concentration of public housing and rent subsidies--might make Barberton a "magnet" for low-income households. A mayor intent on reviving the city's tax base and attracting and retaining the middle class challenged NCS to demonstrate how its policies could help the city. This new political climate posed a difficult and crucial strategic challenge for the organization--which relied on funds voted by the City Council for the overwhelming majority of its budget. NCS, believed its leadership, would have to find ways to reconcile its mission with the new political climate in town or find a new way to fund its programs--or simply close up shop. This nonprofit management case is meant to allow for discussion of how organizational strategy should adapt to political change. In particular, it raises the question of the extent and nature of the obligation of those receiving public funds to defer to elected officials. The case can also be used in discussion of housing policy per se, to explore the question of when and where housing subsidies are appropriate. HKS Case Number 1707.0

In November 2001, an Indian non-governmental organization dedicated to improving the lives and housing of the slum-dwellers of Bombay (Mumbai) learned that there were potential financial problems with a major new housing project in which it had invested and had convinced others to invest. The Society for the Protection of Area Resources Centres (SPARC) had, over the previous four years, repeatedly used its good name and contacts to bring together a group of private and nonprofit investors to construct a three-building, 268-unit development in the middle of Dharavi, generally considered Asia's largest slum. It had convinced one of the world's largest financial institutions, Citibank, to loan funds to India's National Slum Dwellers Federation, the organization that would build the Dharavi project; it had convinced an international nonprofit organization, the London-based Homeless International, to finance the loan, and had advanced its own funds to get the project started. But when Citbank warns that it has doubts about the likelihood of private, higher-income buyers being willing to move into a slum area-even into a new apartment building-SPARC finds it must decide whether and how to respond. Its options range from the pragmatic-simply scaling back the three-tower project-to organizing pressure and protest against Citibank, which appeared to have agreed to invest in part to burnish its image as it sought to expand its branch operations in Bombay. The case highlights some of the unexpected ways in which commercial globalization affects the potential for philanthropy and the tactics and strategy of community activists intent on extra-market measures to improve the lives of the poor. It raises both strategic issues for the nonprofit activists at the center of the narrative and questions about housing policy, as well-among them, the question of the extent of the role which philanthropically-financed "model housing" can play in ameliorating slum conditions.

In the spring of 1998, nonprofit agencies known as "child-sponsorship" organizations found themselves on the defensive. The agencies-dedicated to raising charitable funds in the United States to support children and their communities in poor, developing countries-had been the subject of a scathing critique, a two-part series in the Chicago Tribune accusing them, in effect, of misleading donors. The series asserted that the organizations had not lived up to the promise implicit in fundraising advertisements: that specific children would benefit directly from the contributions of individual sponsors. The agencies mounted a spirited and largely successful public defense of their approach-one in which aid was targeted not only at individual children but at the communities in which they lived. At the same time, however, they sought new ways to reassure the public about their effectiveness. This case details the ensuing effort by a group of six child sponsorship agencies to agree on "industry" standards that would make their goals and methods clear. The case describes the differing situations of the various organizations so as to lay the groundwork for discussion about likely difficulties in reaching agreement on standards, as well as extrapolation as to what sort of standards could both command consensus among the agencies and satisfy public demands for "transparency." The case serves the broader purpose of framing the issues and dynamics of industry self-regulation more generally, particularly in a nonprofit context. See also, Part B (1665.0). HKS Case Number 1664.0

In the spring of 1998, nonprofit agencies known as "child-sponsorship" organizations found themselves on the defensive. The agencies-dedicated to raising charitable funds in the United States to support children and their communities in poor, developing countries-had been the subject of a scathing critique, a two-part series in the Chicago Tribune accusing them, in effect, of misleading donors. The series asserted that the organizations had not lived up to the promise implicit in fundraising advertisements: that specific children would benefit directly from the contributions of individual sponsors. The agencies mounted a spirited and largely successful public defense of their approach-one in which aid was targeted not only at individual children but at the communities in which they lived. At the same time, however, they sought new ways to reassure the public about their effectiveness. This case details the ensuing effort by a group of six child sponsorship agencies to agree on "industry" standards that would make their goals and methods clear. The case describes the differing situations of the various organizations so as to lay the groundwork for discussion about likely difficulties in reaching agreement on standards, as well as extrapolation as to what sort of standards could both command consensus among the agencies and satisfy public demands for "transparency." The case serves the broader purpose of framing the issues and dynamics of industry self-regulation more generally, particularly in a nonprofit context. See also, Part B (1665.0). HKS Case Number 1665.0