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In 2009, Dan Meyer and Richard Palmer, two veterans of the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry, founded Nehemiah Manufacturing to build FMCG brands while providing jobs to Cincinnati, Ohio's beleaguered urban core. Two years later, the pair made their first "second-chance" hire of a convicted felon, a successful experiment which would grow to define the company. By 2019, Nehemiah's factory floor, as well as several supervisory and management positions, would be staffed by ex-offenders. With a robust net of social support services and a non-profit foundation for training peer companies in how to hire second-chance employees, Meyer and Palmer advocated using second-chance hiring to decrease turnover and create staff loyalty. This case deals with the challenges and opportunities associated with growing a manufacturing company while prioritizing a social mission, and enables students to evaluate the potential of second-chance hiring programs.

SK Group, one of Korea's largest conglomerates, announced its Double Bottom Line (DBL) initiative in 2018. In January 2019, Chairman Tae-won Chey unveiled the company's pledge not only to monitor and report SK's social value, but also see social value account for 50 percent of the company's key performance indicators. This case study follows SK's shift to DBL management and efforts to place social value at the core of its business model. Social media and a hyper-connected society heaped unprecedented pressure on corporates to deliver value and to make sure no-one was left behind. To implement its DBL initiative, SK, a leading producer of energy, chemicals, telecoms, and semiconductors, needed to investigate how to measure social value created in all its business operations in monetary terms - whether value created (positive value) or value destroyed (negative value). SK began to measure its indirect contributions to the economy and business activity, in addition to social contributions like employee volunteer programs, and SK donations and CSR activities. These efforts covered all aspects of SK's operations, from the 3,600 SK-operated gas stations throughout Korea to water-free scrubbers designed to process impurities discharged during semiconductor production. The case also looks at SK's efforts to explore new institutional frameworks to multilateralize its social value agenda, to build a common and actionable approach to social value creation and measurement within the broader global business community.

Gun violence was a significant problem in America. Three Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellows Christy Wood, Russell Sternlicht, and Gareth Glaser each decided to do something about gun safety. They each used their professional and leadership experience to identify their own solutions to the issue. Wood created a set of principles for investments funds to pressure gun manufacturers and gun sellers within their portfolios to adopt safety standards. Sternlicht designed a membership-based lobbying and advocacy group in order to harness the power of mass movements to create positive change. And Glaser founded a smart-gun company whose product could help reduce certain types of deaths and injuries. Would any of these three innovations move beyond the historical gridlock on gun safety?

BerkShares is a local currency in western Massachusetts and is a project instituted by the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and BerkShares, Inc., which seeks to foster local and resilient economies. Along with the BerkShares project is the Entry to Entrepreneurship (E2E) Program which aims to develop local entrepreneurs to create local businesses that serve the local economy. Both of these initiatives focus on helping the Berkshires region become as economically self-sufficient as possible. Ultimately, the vision is to create a local currency that is backed by a local basket of goods and not the US dollar. Set in 2019, this case allows for a discussion of the impacts that big-box retailers (and more recently, online retailers) can have on the economy of small towns, generally damaging local businesses and the jobs, tax dollars, entrepreneurial spirit and civic leadership that they create. The case also explores what can be done to avert that outcome by examining the merits and success metrics of a local currency, the importance of a local supply chain of businesses, and the need for more self-sufficiency within local economies. It is challenging to keep an economy truly "local" in today's world and mechanisms like local currency face significant barriers to survive, much less scale, in a globalized economy.

DHAN is a non-government organisation with a difference. It is neither a philanthropic organisation nor a service organisation but a development organisation focused on grassroots development, aided by professional management. At the same time, its vision is to be only an enabling institution rather than a directing agency. Dedicated to the mission of poverty eradication through grassroots development action, DHAN had made a significant impact on the Indian scene in the years since its inception in 1997. By 2011, when the events in the case were taking place, it had touched the lives of over 920,000 households across 12 states in India. In its mission to combat poverty, DHAN initially employed two major thematic interventions, namely, community banking and water management. However, over a period of time, it forayed into several other domains such as healthcare, education and livelihood generation, in response to the dynamic requirements of its community of beneficiaries. The case, divided into two parts, focuses on the theme of climate change adaptation and, more specifically, the promotion of climate resilient corps (small millets) and the associated production, processing, marketing and value chain management challenges, which have significant lessons for both the development and corporate sectors, on how to prepare the economically disadvantaged communities to the inevitable impact on their lives of impending climate change.

DHAN is a non-government organisation with a difference. It is neither a philanthropic organisation nor a service organisation but a development organisation focused on grassroots development, aided by professional management. At the same time, its vision is to be only an enabling institution rather than a directing agency. Dedicated to the mission of poverty eradication through grassroots development action, DHAN had made a significant impact on the Indian scene in the years since its inception in 1997. By 2011, when the events in the case were taking place, it had touched the lives of over 920,000 households across 12 states in India. In its mission to combat poverty, DHAN initially employed two major thematic interventions, namely, community banking and water management. However, over a period of time, it forayed into several other domains such as healthcare, education and livelihood generation, in response to the dynamic requirements of its community of beneficiaries. The case, divided into two parts, focuses on the theme of climate change adaptation and, more specifically, the promotion of climate resilient corps (small millets) and the associated production, processing, marketing and value chain management challenges, which have significant lessons for both the development and corporate sectors, on how to prepare the economically disadvantaged communities to the inevitable impact on their lives of impending climate change.

The Austrian Republic School, an elementary public school in Chile, faced a severe crisis. Despite its management team and faculty's effort, the school's absenteeism and dropout rates kept rising. The solutions tried had failed to engage students and to secure their families' support. The absenteeism issue proved particularly acute for the vulnerable population served by this school and had called the attention of Chile's Education Ministry. This scenario was compounded by a financial distress: the school lacked the necessary resources to provide the additional support required by this population, such as psychological and social counseling or family engagement activities.Against such a complex backdrop, Luis Lacourt, the school's principal, caught a glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel: a means to mitigate this problem. Chile's SEP Act offered grants to schools working with "priority" students coming from underprivileged social and financial backgrounds. Yet, access to these subsidies depended on good attendance rates. It was a catch-22-like problem: the SEP Act would enable the school to access the resources required to work on its problems, but the school would not qualify for this funding if it didn't show improvements in its key metrics. How should the school go about it? What could it do to engage families in order to lower dropout and absenteeism rate.

From 2008-2010 Anand Piramal ran a series of pilots for his digital healthcare startup, Piramal e-Swasthya (PeS) to "democratize healthcare" in rural areas of India. PeS ran into difficulties so Anand Piramal had to decide whether to continue the organization and if so how. In 2010, an unexpected opportunity emerged that could have significant implications for PeS's organizational structure and future prospects. Anand Piramal now faced several options for PeS. He needed to weigh the pros and cons of each option to make the best decision to fulfill his vision of providing quality healthcare services to "bottom-of-the-pyramid" populations. This case exemplifies the strategic decisions an entrepreneur must make to ensure that a social impact venture can be sustainable and scalable.

Supplemental to case 517025. This (B) case describes the changes in the organization's strategy from one of Building Playgrounds to Influencing Play. It describes the implementation of the strategy and the challenges it faced internally and externally. It goes on to describe how the organization under its new leader, James Siegal, further adjusted the strategy and its implementation, to navigate through the initial difficulties. The case closes with the question, what else should the organization do to help the new strategy take off?

This case explores the challenges and opportunities of practicing venture philanthropy in an emerging market. Jaff Shen, a serial social entrepreneur and Founder/General Secretary of Leping Social Entrepreneur Foundation ("Leping"), brought the international venture philanthropy network Social Venture Partners ("SVP") to China in 2012 to help build China's overall civil society and proclivity for social entrepreneurship. SVP's Beijing branch, which launched as a non-profit in 2013, made fast progress in attracting partners and investing in multiple mission-driven organizations. SVP Shanghai followed in 2016, registering as a for-profit for greater flexibility of operations, but was making slow progress. Students are asked to explain the reasons for Shanghai's slow growth, and then critically evaluate a strategy suggested to Shen for accelerating the progress. They must take a stand in Shen's internal debate about whether to push a fast top-down strategy or tolerate a slower-paced bottom-up trajectory. Students also have the opportunity to compare four different SPO investment opportunities shortlisted by SVP Shanghai's partners for their initial investment, and to propose an evaluative framework for screening the potential targets and subsequently monitoring the investment outcomes.

This case explores the opportunities and challenges of building a sustainable social enterprise in China. It traces the development in Shenzhen, China, of Shenzhen Xihaner Car Wash Center ("Xihaner Car Wash"), founded in August 2015 by Mr. Jun Cao, the father of a Xihaner child. Cao's goal was to provide gainful employment and continuing care for Xihaners. From the start, he was determined to build a social enterprise that could generate enough profits to become sustainable over the long term and not a charitable organization that relied on donations. With a carefully designed business model, Xihaner Car Wash made good progress in its first two years. Its achievements won the enterprise the Gold Award at the Sixth China Charity Fair on September 24, 2017. Despite these achievements, Xihaner Car Wash still faces many challenges. Cao wonders: "Do we have a sustainable business model for our social enterprise? How can we grow Xihaner Car Wash further to benefit more Xihaners in China?"

After a challenging start to the Liberian Energy Network, Richard Fahey and Robert Saudek, together with their Liberian counterpart Abu Sherif, set out to realign the company business plan, grow LEN, and bring light to even more Liberians. They formed new partnerships, identified new business opportunities, and persevered through a series of hurdles.

The case examines the strategy, impact, and sustainability of a boutique philanthropy with a big goal: change the way people donate to charities. Epic Foundation was founded to support a portfolio of children's charities. Now, its leadership was considering taking on a broader role: to reshape the very nature of charitable giving-in the U.S., France, the United Kingdom and globally. Its wealthy, charismatic leader, Alexandre Mars, thought that Epic could be at the forefront of a movement to transform the global culture of giving. But there was an open question among the fundraising, communications and marketing teams at Epic about how to jockey between the management and growth of its portfolio and this new advocacy orientation. It was unclear whether Epic could simultaneously pursue both. Should Epic continue to grow and possibly diversify its portfolio of charities, or should it focus more on an advocacy model? Mars wanted to advocate for "making giving the norm"-a call for citizens to make frequent charitable donations through work, point-of-purchase and online channels. But were Epic's ideas truly innovative when it came to fostering this giving norm and was it positioned to advocate for it?

This case is part of a series of four integrated cases about The Empowerment Plan (TEP), a Detroit-based nonprofit that worked to break the cycle of homelessness through training, employment, and job placement. Founded in 2012 by Veronika Scott, TEP recruited employees through homeless shelters and provided them with training, education, and full-time employment manufacturing sleeping bag coats. The specially designed coats were distributed free of charge to the homeless population. Case C asks students to work in teams to deliver a presentation aimed at persuading a particular stakeholder group (corporate donors, individual donors, foundations) to donate to TEP. They will learn to select, organize, and present information clearly, concisely, and professionally. This case is appropriate for a class session focused on persuasive communications. Note: A background information document about The Empowerment Plan accompanies this case.

This case is part of a series of four integrated cases about The Empowerment Plan (TEP), a Detroit-based nonprofit that worked to break the cycle of homelessness through training, employment, and job placement. Founded in 2012 by Veronika Scott, TEP recruited employees through homeless shelters and provided them with training, education, and full-time employment manufacturing sleeping bag coats. The specially designed coats were distributed free of charge to the homeless population. Case A presents basic information about the founding of TEP, how employees were hired and trained, employee roles on the production line, and how employees were promoted, managed and motivated. The case also introduces the concept of the TEP internship/fellowship program and is appropriate for a class session focused on job design and job crafting.

This case is part of a series of four integrated cases about The Empowerment Plan (TEP), a Detroit-based nonprofit that worked to break the cycle of homelessness through training, employment, and job placement. Founded in 2012 by Veronika Scott, TEP recruited employees through homeless shelters and provided them with training, education, and full-time employment manufacturing sleeping bag coats. The specially designed coats were distributed free of charge to the homeless population. Case B reviews the founding of TEP as a nonprofit entity, discusses the agency and employment model used at TEP, and introduces the Maxwell Detroit retail line of coats. It is most appropriate for a class session focused on key employment law concepts and product liability issues.

Gilberto Dimenstein, a well-known Brazilian journalist, created a new model called Catraca Livre in 2011 that connected residents of Sao Paulo with untapped resources by aggregating information into a centralized online platform. As an Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard, Dimenstein developed Catraca Livre to fulfill the goal of fostering community empowerment. From 2011 to 2019, Catraca Livre grew to become a major news site in Brazil, serving over 50 million users over 8 digital channels. Catraca Livre expanded its scope to focus on digital campaigns, which combatted issues like sexual assault and fake news. Catraca Livre also scaled as an organization by achieving financial independence and no longer relying on funding from foundation, moving into a new headquarters, and adding an in-house technology team. After stepping down as CEO of Catraca Livre in May 2017, Dimenstein founded a new venture, ReciproCidade, which leverages the resources of Catraca Livre to stimulate creative community projects to further its social impact. This case shows how Dimenstein scaled Catraca Livre to have greater reach throughout Brazil through the use of digital technologies and offers a model for community empowerment and advocacy globally through a digital platform.

The case, set in October 2017, follows the predicament of two enterprising young women, Saranya Das Sharma (Saranya) and Aamiya Viswanathan (Aamiya ), the founders of Project Sashakt. After learning that a large number of girls dropped out of school after reaching puberty due to lack of access to affordable disposable sanitary napkin and the adverse impact on the environment caused by the rampant use of disposal of non-indegradable sanitary napkins, Saranya and Aamiya founded Project Sashakt (Sashakt). It crowdsourced fund and procured 100% compostable sanitary pads that it distributed free of cost to the beneficiaries in and around Delhi. In addition, Sashakt conducted awareness workshops and outreach programs to educate the girls on MHM and dispel the taboos surrounding menstruation and they eventually extended their outreach programs to nearby slums. Sashakt's suppliers, Aasma Foundation and Aakar Innovations, were supportive of the cause and supplied biodegradable sanitary napkins at subsidized prices. Yet, as Sashakt grew, in order to become financially self-reliant and sustainable, the founders began to seriously consider the idea of vertically integrating the operations by setting up a biodegradable sanitary pad manufacturing unit in a village in Bihar, a state in Eastern India with poor gender parity indicators. They hoped that the manufacturing unit would not only create employment opportunities for disadvantaged rural women but also produce cost-competitive supplies for the project's free distribution drives, thereby scaling the scope and impact of Sashakt. The proposed venture involved a large capital outlay, yet that was the least of their concerns. They were more concerned about the potential implications of a non-profit transitioning into a social enterprise and the challenges and risks involved in setting up - and scaling up - the proposed venture.

The case is set in January 2019, when Di Xu, the team leader of Ant Forest, a green initiative within the Chinese payment and lifestyle app Alipay, is reviewing the strategy for Ant Forest. Ant Forest was started in 2016 as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project under Alipay. It was financially supported by Alipay's parent company, Ant Financial. From the time of its launch to October 2018, Ant Forest has managed to attract almost 400 million users to its cause of promoting 'green', low carbon emissions behaviour among the lifestyles of its users. It has done so by letting users of Ant Forest win 'energy points' through low-carbon behaviours (such as walking to work instead of driving, or reducing their use of plastic), and then accumulating the points towards planting a virtual tree of their choice. When a user had accumulated a sufficient number of energy points, Ant Forest would, through its partners, plant a real, physical tree on their behalf in the deserts of Inner Mongolia. The uptake of the Ant Forest initiative has exceeded the team's expectations, and there has been considerable positive feedback received from users who have experienced good social and health benefits through their use of Ant Forest. Di Xu is now evaluating the next steps for Ant Forest. Should the Ant Forest initiative be taken overseas? If so, which features of the product, and the business model, should be implemented?

In late March 2017, Clara Miller, director and president of the F.B. Heron Foundation ("Heron"), a philanthropic institution focused on helping people help themselves out of poverty, sat down to put the finishing touches on her President's Letter. In previous years, the letter included Miller's lucid thoughts regarding major changes within the organization and advocated for movement toward a "philanthropic world"-a world in which "all sectors-public and private companies, partnerships, nonprofits, government-[were] actively and broadly philanthropic in their regular operations." In her 2017 letter, however, Miller had more to talk about than ever. Over the prior five years, Miller, who joined Heron in 2011 with over three decades of nonprofit management experience, had led the organization through a strategic and operational transformation. In 2012, she launched a five-year plan to invest 100 percent of the endowment toward better fulfilling the organization's mission. By December 2016, Heron had done just that. In the process, Heron's board and staff reset the organization's investment policy statement and unified the investment program functions to create a new operating model. Miller realized that there was still more work to do. The board and staff saw 100 percent as a "false summit" and looked ahead to optimizing an endowment that was 100 percent aligned for mission. And while Heron had been influential over the years in encouraging others to adopt the organization's original vision of being more than a private investment company, the practice was still rare in philanthropy. It seemed that the goal of a "philanthropic world"-one going beyond the walls of the foundation or philanthropy alone-was more urgent than ever. This case describes how the Heron board went about visualizing the future in terms of leadership, strategic direction, and Heron's own leadership within the philanthropic world.