When Michael Feinberg and Dan Levin established their fledgling Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) school in Houston in the early 1990s, they hoped only to prove in their own school that a highly-structured and demanding program could lift the academic performance of disadvantaged students. Little more than 10 years later, however, the name KIPP and the approach they had honed had become an education "brand name," used by more than 40 schools overseen by the KIPP Foundation they had helped to establish and operate. This case tells the story of how KIPP grew from a single school to an education franchise, all the while taking steps to ensure that its special approach continued to be employed in schools bearing the KIPP name. More specifically, the case focuses on the relationship between KIPP founders Levin and Feinberg and two key philanthropists, Donald and Doris Fisher, who used the fortune earned in their GAP apparel chain to help the KIPP idea "go to scale." The case focuses on the decisions of Fisher, Feinberg, Levin, and the legal staff of the San Francisco based KIPP Foundation, financed by the Fishers, to ensure that KIPP standards would be maintained at KIPP schools. HKS Case Number 1847.0

This social entrepreneurship case focuses on the start-up and first four years of Upwardly Global, a San Francisco-based nonprofit founded to help place immigrant professionals in jobs commensurate with their levels of skill and education. The case tells the story of "UpGlo" founder Jane Leu, describing how she reached the conclusion that both government-funded refugee aid programs, and private sector job placement firms, were failing immigrants with professional backgrounds. The case describes the business model developed by Leu and traces the organization's successful emergence as a free-standing entity, supported by a combination of philanthropic grants, and corporate and individual fees. (Leu was named a fellow in 2004 by Ashoka, the international organization that s and provides support for those it designates "changemakers," primarily those who have established successful new nonprofit service-provider organizations.) HKS Case Number 1803.0

Twenty five years after its founding in members' homes, the non-denominational, evangelical Fellowship Bible Church of Little Rock, Arkansas had become a "mega-church", holding worship services on a 25-acre campus in one of the best locations in booming West Little Rock and attracting a combined 5,000 congregants on any given Sunday. But as the Fellowship congregation had grown, its leadership had come to believe that the Christian life must go beyond individual salvation and the responsibilities of family, friendship, and individual acts of charity and that church members must strive to be "socially responsible". In its effort to become a "church of irresistible influence", Fellowship Bible had taken the lead in organizing a massive citywide day of volunteer projects. In addition, ministries that had originated in small groups of church members-such as a sexual abstinence education program held in dozens of public and private schools-had taken on an independent life as well known free-standing organizations. Such efforts were made possible, in part, by charitable contributions made by Fellowship which totaled more than 25 percent ($3 million-plus) of its annual spending. This case tells the story of the next stage in church efforts to ameliorate social ills in Little Rock-an "external ministry" known as the "one church, one school, one neighborhood" project, announced in August 2004. Fellowship hoped that its assistance would demonstrably and measurably improve life in one of the city's most troubled areas-a 130-block area of central Little Rock. The project would include intensive mentoring of students one school in Little Rock's predominantly black South Midtown area (Fellowship itself was an almost entirely white congregation), efforts to work with African-American churches to encourage marriage in an area dominated by single-parent families, and an initiative to build new housing in the area. HKS Case Number 1780.0

The (A) case (1739.0) focuses on the early years of the program in the 1990s, providing a definitive account--based on interviews with those who drafted the authorizing legislation--on how the program was conceived and structured and how it gained Congressional approval, including the political reasons for directing some AmeriCorps grants to large, multi-state "national direct" organizations such as Teach for America, and others to small, local organizations funded through state "service commissions". Ultimately, the case narrows its focus to the public financial management question about how to fund a special trust fund from which education awards for AmeriCorps members are paid. The case raises the question of how to fund the National Service Education Trustthe mismanagement of which comes to spark the 2002-2003 budget crisis affecting the entire programin a way that is both prudential but not overly expensive. In combination with the beginning the of the (B) case, this case can be used to discuss estimation models for funding a wide variety of public benefits, including such analogues as public pension systems such as the US social security system. HKS Case Number 1739.0

The (B) case, details the decisions which the Corporation for National and Community Service made as to how best to estimate the funding needs for the Trust. The (B) case (1740.0), however, goes on to frame political questions which develop when the National Service Trust is judged to be "under-funded". Specifically, it frames the question of whether and how organizations which receive federal grants to hire AmeriCorps "volunteers" should organize to resist budget reductions which appear to be in the offing as a result of the financial problems of the Trust. A field which had been relatively unorganized and, indeed, was notable for factions (eg. national versus local) and competing interests, must decide whether to seek to create a united front to lobby for higher funding. The case describes the range of obstacles to the construction of such a political coalition and raises questions both about the logistics and the wisdom of doing so. HKS Case Number 1740.0

The sequel (1740.1) describes the emergence of a high-profile public lobbying effort called Save AmeriCorps. It details the full-court press effort-including the use of national and local media, political contacts of board members, and a range of public events-meant to convince Congressional appropriators to approve an emergency supplemental budget which would include additional funds for Americorps grants. Finally, the fact that the Coalition's effort falls short, at least in the near-term, raises questions about the long-term impact of such lobbying-as well as the more fundamental question about whether it makes sense for volunteers and nonprofit organizations to look to government for salaries and operating funds. HKS Case Number 1740.1

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.

Nearly 30 years after it was first incorporated to help stabilize and improve older, declining parts of the city, Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of Chicago had become among the best-known and most-respected organizations of its kind. Its combination of low-interest lending to homebuyers and home renovators, as well as its neighborhood improvement efforts, had won it credit for helping to maintain or revive parts of Chicago during a time when the city was losing population and private financial institutions were loathe to make conventional loans in its poorer neighborhoods. But, in the late 1990s, NHS Chicago finds it is facing a struggle to survive. Poorer neighborhoods, long-starved of credit, find themselves flooded by lending offers from a new generation of so-called "subprime" lenders. NHS efforts to improve the nine Chicago neighborhoods in which it has offices are threatened both by mortgage foreclosures which result from such high-interest loans, and by a decline in NHS Chicago's own lending business, which has difficulty competing with well-advertised "subprimes". This case raises the question of what strategy NHS Chicago, under pressure from a major foundation which had historically helped support it, should adopt to right itself financially and whether and how it should continue the mission for which it was founded. Case discussion may include both an examination of data-including trends in its revenues and expenses-and of prospective long-term organizational strategies. HKS Case Number 1659.0

When the fast-growing Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, Florida finds out that a key, privately-owned parcel of land adjoining its "campus" is up for sale, it moves quickly-but unsuccessfully-to convince the owner to sell the land through an arrangement combining a long-term payout and select tax advantages. The owners' rejection of this approach forces the museum to consider a variety of other options, ranging from partnership with a for-profit firm to a request for financial assistance from local county government, that already owned the land on which the formerly-public museum was located. This case uses the "Fowler Avenue land parcel question" as a window into the ways in which sudden, individual decisions faced by nonprofit boards of trustees are linked to larger strategic and financial issues for institutions. The MOSI board must consider the long-term prospects for its endowment, the question of admission fees, even the question of the propriety and efficacy of using board members to lobby public officials. The case was developed with the support of the Museum Trustee Association. Author: Howard Husock Sponsor: Christine Letts HKS Case Number 1629.0

When the fast-growing Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, Florida finds out that a key, privately-owned parcel of land adjoining its "campus" is up for sale, it moves quickly-but unsuccessfully-to convince the owner to sell the land through an arrangement combining a long-term payout and select tax advantages. The owners' rejection of this approach forces the museum to consider a variety of other options, ranging from partnership with a for-profit firm to a request for financial assistance from local county government, that already owned the land on which the formerly-public museum was located. This case uses the "Fowler Avenue land parcel question" as a window into the ways in which sudden, individual decisions faced by nonprofit boards of trustees are linked to larger strategic and financial issues for institutions. The MOSI board must consider the long-term prospects for its endowment, the question of admission fees, even the question of the propriety and efficacy of using board members to lobby public officials. The case was developed with the support of the Museum Trustee Association. HKS Case Number 1629.1

Notwithstanding its reputation as a free market bastion, Hong Kong has long been home to a well-developed, government-supported "social sector." Although many non-governmental social service organizations began as purely private and charitable, the government, over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, began to pay an increasing share of their budgets through payments known as "subventions." In the mid-1990s, however, the leaders of nonprofit social service organizations become increasingly concerned that the conditions under which their organizations receive public support-including pay scales, job descriptions, and staffing levels set by the government-allowed too little management flexibility. This case describes the evolution of a replacement "subvention" system one which, instead of providing support for specific positions and supplies, would instead provide the social service nonprofits with "lump sum" grants-a single pot which NGO managers would apportion. The case details the complexity of planning and implementing such a transition, focusing among other things on the transition arrangements required to ensure continuity of services and minimum of workforce disruption. The government must deal specifically with fears of senior social workers that the new system will give managers an incentive to replace them with new, more junior hires. In addition to allowing for discussion of the specific dilemmas faced in Hong Kong, the case can be a point of departure for a more general discussion about the variety of imaginable relationships between the public and nonprofit sectors and how such arrangements are, as a practical matter, effected. HKS Case Number 1630.0

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, high atop a great many of the older, concrete-block buildings of lower-income parts of central Hong Kong and the neighborhoods of the Kowloon peninsula, informal metal-framed wooden structures were built to house thousands of the city's families in austere, though inexpensive, quarters. These "illegal rooftop structures" comprised what could be a called a shantytown of the air, one made up of structures which, though built illegally, were nonetheless bought, sold, and rented on the open market. Such structures, moreover, were just one example of the larger phenomenon of so-called unauthorized building works in Hong Kong. These UBWs, as they were known in the city's Buildings Department, included balconies added to windows-sometimes used for beds on which people slept high in the air-as well as hundreds of thousands of storefront street signs and canopy extensions to the ground floors of buildings in commercial districts, the latter used to create spaces rented to stores and restaurants. By 1999, it was estimated that UBWs of all kinds in Hong Kong totaled a staggering 800,000. By one estimate, if authorities continued enforcement as they had been doing, it would take more than 130 years to effect the removal of all such structures-assuming that new ones were not built in their place. This case raises the thorny question of the extent to which and methods by which Hong Kong should use the law to minimize or eliminate such unauthorized building works-in a city where some parts of the public care most about public safety, while others-often much poorer-care most about shelter. HKS Case Number 1631.0

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, high atop a great many of the older, concrete-block buildings of lower-income parts of central Hong Kong and the neighborhoods of the Kowloon peninsula, informal metal-framed wooden structures were built to house thousands of the city's families in austere, though inexpensive, quarters. These "illegal rooftop structures" comprised what could be a called a shantytown of the air, one made up of structures which, though built illegally, were nonetheless bought, sold, and rented on the open market. Such structures, moreover, were just one example of the larger phenomenon of so-called unauthorized building works in Hong Kong. These UBWs, as they were known in the city's Buildings Department, included balconies added to windows-sometimes used for beds on which people slept high in the air-as well as hundreds of thousands of storefront street signs and canopy extensions to the ground floors of buildings in commercial districts, the latter used to create spaces rented to stores and restaurants. By 1999, it was estimated that UBWs of all kinds in Hong Kong totaled a staggering 800,000. By one estimate, if authorities continued enforcement as they had been doing, it would take more than 130 years to effect the removal of all such structures-assuming that new ones were not built in their place. This case raises the thorny question of the extent to which and methods by which Hong Kong should use the law to minimize or eliminate such unauthorized building works-in a city where some parts of the public care most about public safety, while others-often much poorer-care most about shelter. HKS Case Number 1631.0

As the 1998-99 school year began in the state of Kerala, India, state education officials were setting out to bring radical change to government schools. A new approach-designed to be child-friendly and to de-emphasize rote learning and textbook-based teacher lectures in favor of "guided learning and playful interaction"-would, in the words of Education Secretary K. Jayakumar, be no less than "an affirmation of the rights of the child." But as the extension of the so-called District Primary Education Program (DPEP) began to reach all school districts in Kerala, the approach was embroiled in controversy. The leader of the political opposition called for it to be halted. Newly-organized protest groups, charged that reform threatened to dilute education standards and create two tiers of Kerala students. It would fall to Mr. Jayakumar and other state officials to convince the public that the DPEP plan was best for the nearly three million school children of Kerala. Their task required officials to defend the concept of the program, even as they continued to oversee the details of its implementation. The approach they chose would leave some convinced that DPEP had been successfully institutionalized in Kerala, while some of the reform's strongest proponents believed that DPEP had been profoundly compromised. HKS Case Number 1573.0

In this case, the relationship between public goalsthe revitalization of distressed neighborhoods in Philadelphiaand nonprofit organizations is mediated by an unusual vehicle. A Pennsylvania state tax credit program is designed to channel funds from private, for-profit firms to not-for-profit neighborhood groups. The case describes the first five years of the so-called Philadelphia Plan and a series of specific projects supported by specific firms, in exchange for a reduction in state corporate taxes. The projects profiled include a housing program for the formerly homeless supported by Crown, Cork and Seal Corporation; a neighborhood housing improvement program supported by Allstate Insurance; and a community development corporation and builder of subsidized housing supported by Mellon Bank. The case implicitly raises the question of whether it is prudent or effective for state government to direct funds toward nonprofits in this way; whether government should facilitate such "tripartite" (public, private, nonprofit) arrangements which could redound to the business advantage of firms; whether public sector involvement in fundraising for nonprofits will support their mission or divert them from it. For students of urban problems, the case also raises the question of whether the work of nonprofits such as those described in the case can be an effective means of improving distressed neighborhoodsand how such improvement could or should be measured. HKS Case Number 1578.0

The case describes the internationally known Singapore initiative to implement electronically deducted charges for road use, varying by route, type of vehicle, and time of day. The case highlights the widespread public acceptance of the relatively elaborate and novel pricing regime, following an extensive public information and consultation campaign conducted by Singapore's Land Transport Authority. Useful for those interested in successful public consultation. HKS Case Number 1520.0

The case describes the internationally known Singapore initiative to implement electronically deducted charges for road use, varying by route, type of vehicle, and time of day. The case highlights the widespread public acceptance of the relatively elaborate and novel pricing regime, following an extensive public information and consultation campaign conducted by Singapore's Land Transport Authority. Useful for those interested in successful public consultation. HKS Case Number 1520.0

As part of its efforts to recover from hyperinflation and an oversized public sector, the government of Argentinaspecifically the province of Buenos Airesseeks to control costs and improve service in local government. To do so, the provincial government tries a bold strategy: it splits up three large suburban Buenos Aires municipalities into eight new, smaller, jurisdictions. This budgeting, financial management, and political strategy case focuses on the implementation of the move toward smaller, more local government, through the prism of the creation of one of the new municipalities: the town of Hurlingham. The case describes the nuts-and-bolts budget decisions which a transition team of officials must make: how to structure the new government, how to increase tax receipts and the political decisions which its new mayor confronts. He must decide which parts of the new town will get service priority: high-voting wealthy districts where tax collection has been low, or poorer neighborhoods from which the new mayor drew key electoral support? This case allows both for rigorous budget analysis and assessment of budget-related political strategy. HKS Case Number 1493.1

As part of its efforts to recover from hyperinflation and an oversized public sector, the government of Argentinaspecifically the province of Buenos Airesseeks to control costs and improve service in local government. To do so, the provincial government tries a bold strategy: it splits up three large suburban Buenos Aires municipalities into eight new, smaller, jurisdictions. This budgeting, financial management, and political strategy case focuses on the implementation of the move toward smaller, more local government, through the prism of the creation of one of the new municipalities: the town of Hurlingham. The case describes the nuts-and-bolts budget decisions which a transition team of officials must make how to structure the new government, how to increase tax receipts and the political decisions which its new mayor confronts. He must decide which parts of the new town will get service priority: high-voting wealthy districts where tax collection has been low, or poorer neighborhoods from which the new mayor drew key electoral support? This case allows both for rigorous budget analysis and assessment of budget-related political strategy. HKS Case Number 1493.0