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Dr. Vera Cordeiro founded the NGO Instituto Dara in 1991 to help poor families break the cycle of poverty and illness in Brazil. She and her team of employees and volunteers developed a holistic methodology to address the multidimensional sources of poverty based on the pillars of health, housing, citizenship, income, and education. After introducing the seeds of this approach, the case examines the evolution of the organization's attempts to grow its social impact in Brazil and beyond-including a loose network of sister organizations, social franchising, licensing agreements, and government adoption.

Tecnosol's business model proved innovative in three key ways. Firstly, the firm made strategic alliances to reach the bottom of the pyramid. Secondly, the firm focused heavily on quality post-sale customer service, decreasing the costs of future maintenance or repairs, while at the same time strengthening the Tecnosol brand and increasing client satisfaction. Lastly, Tecnosol developed several distribution channels to reach their bottom of the pyramid clients in these remote rural communities, providing quality service. Nonetheless, Tecnosol faced major challenges going forward. Technological advancements and mass production increased the efficiency of solar panels pushing down prices. In addition, the frontier of Tecnosol's rural clients moved farther away as electrification efforts decreased the number of rural Nicaraguans in the dark. Tecnosol had been able to tap the rural residential market, but had not succeeded with agro-industrial or commercial sectors, neither with the urban market. In June 2017, the Nicaraguan Assembly passed Law 272, which allowed utility customers producing energy to inject their surplus into the national grid without cost. In some cases, when surpassing a certain amount of energy, customers would be able to sell their surplus. Previously, customers would be billed for the surplus. This practice, known as net metering, was already commonplace in many parts of the worlds.

This case study examines the B Corp certification process of Paris-based food products company Danone's North American business. With $6 billion in sales, in 2018 Danone NA became the largest Certified B Corp in the world by a factor of two. The certification of this massive entity created many strategic and logistical challenges for both Danone and B Lab, the non-profit that certifies B Corps. B Corp certification assesses a company's social and environmental performance, and so the case study provides an opportunity to discuss an on-the-ground example of how some of the largest companies in the world are becoming more accountable to the general public. Furthermore, looking forward, students can analyze how the system that B Lab set up to certify mostly smaller and medium-size organizations can be improved in order enable larger organizations to join the B Corp movement. More generally, a key question is about consumer awareness and support. When will large numbers of consumers start making purchases based on their social and environmental values?

Vittala International Institute of Ophthalmology (Vittala), a not-for-profit organization was involved in providing free/highly subsidized eye care to the rural and the economically underprivileged population in the state of Karnataka, India. The case describes the challenges faced by the founder and his family in building the state-of-the-art institution and sustaining it through its difficult initial years. They had to build awareness of avoidable blindness, make eye care accessible and affordable, and develop the right networks and alliances, all within limited resources. Unlike certain eye care issues such as cataract, Vittala focused on retinal eye care problems that required periodic monitoring and treatment. Diagnosis required sophisticated and expensive equipment, which had to be made available in far-flung small towns and villages, and that posed difficulties. To address the challenges, the organization and its founders executed pioneering innovations in organizational arrangements and processes. The case closes with the dilemma facing Krishna, Director of Vittala, which was to examine how the social enterprise could enhance the revenue streams to increase Vittala's reach in providing eye to the economically disadvantaged citizens. He needs to consider issues like creating the right balance of paying and non-paying patients to ensure sustainable operations, consistent quality of care, keeping technology updated, and attracting and retaining medical staff with right skills and values. The case is significant as it highlights what is required to make healthcare accessible and affordable to the poor, and how policy measures can be executed at the ground level through appropriate organizing efforts. It describes how the founder inculcated a system of values to keep the family members together, thus contributing to the effectiveness and sustainability of the social enterprise.

The case, set in mid-2017, traces the evolution of a gender-responsive regional level multi-stakeholder platform called GREAT Women ASEAN, dedicated to the economic empowerment of women micro-producers. In 2008, Jeannie Javelosa (Jeannie) and her friends Regina Francisco and Pacita Juan, had set up ECHOstore under a private entity called Earth Life Store Supply Inc. ECHOstore retailed organic products to upmarket consumers of Manila, Philippines. Identifying the potential to improve the marketability and earnings of the micro-producers, the trio founded ECHOsi, a non-profit foundation in 2009. ECHOsi helped micro-producers improve their products as well as their market base by providing market-linking and business support services through its network of business owners and intermediaries. The Philippines Commission on Women (PCW) roped in ECHOsi as the private sector partner to implement the projects of GREAT Women Programme (GWP), a Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) programme funded by the Canadian government. The efforts resulted in a seamless ecosystem of government agencies, private enterprises and non-profits collaborating to create an inclusive economy for micro-entrepreneurs. As the GREAT Women brand garnered commercial traction, its ownership was transferred to ECHOsi, which entrusted its commercialisation to Earth Life Store Supply Inc. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) eventually identified the GWP as an ideal WEE model to be replicated in the ASEAN region. It enlisted the help of ECHOsi to integrate women micro-entrepreneurs into the regional value chain. Jeannie was in the process of creating a collaborative network of business owners, intermediaries, facilitators, donors and government agencies to sell the products of beneficiaries under the GREAT Women brand. As the impact model scaled, Jeannie had to prepare for the risks involved in franchising the social enterprise and also find the means of funding the expansion.

AMÓS Health and Hope was a Nicaraguan non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 2007 to empower rural communities to establish their health needs and develop action plans to solve them. It also supported these communities, following up on their plans and providing guidance to execute the actions planned. Dr. Laura Chanchien Parajón, AMÓS´ Medical Director and co-founder, was working on a funding application to be submitted to the United States' Agency for International Development (USAID), hoping that it would allow the organization to expand its operations in Nicaragua. AMÓS' new project sought to fight diseases transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, like , Zika, Dengue, and Chikungunya. The rate of these diseases among Nicaragua's population showed a growing trend over recent years. Dr. Chanchien had scheduled a meeting for the next day with Dr. Parajón, the organization's Executive Director, to decide whether they would submit the application or not. Dr. Parajón had some qualms about this new project, including whether it would draw AMÓS away from its mission and whether the organization had the capabilities required to execute it successfully.

The case captures the story of Worldview International Foundation (WIF), focusing especially in the 2012-2016 period during which the organisation started to restore and develop a mangrove forest in the Bay of Bengal on the west coast of Myanmar. The story focuses on the decision-making processes and choices that WIF's chief executive officer Arne Fjørtoft has to take. In 2012, Fjørtoft secures funding from the Letten Foundation in Norway for a three-year research project in Myanmar on mangrove restoration. While his initial project description was simply to start planting mangrove trees for carbon sequestration, the project was redesigned as a research project to align with the new rules the Letten Foundation had to follow. Fjørtoft decides to embark on a two and a half year journey in order to scale the operation within and beyond Myanmar. For this however, he needs funding. Obtaining that funding is the key objective we focus on. The case ends with the students being presented with three alternative options: (a) Kick-start the collaboration with Alan Laubsch from Lykke on the blockchain cryptocurrency called TREE; (b) Pursue Voluntary Carbon Standard accreditation in the hope that WIF could start selling carbon credits to organisations globally; (c) Try another grant application to either the Global Climate Fund or the Norwegian Ministry for Environment and Climate, this time with the help of the United Nations Environment Programme as the accredited agency.

Nutrivida was a social business created by an alliance between Florida Ice & Farm Co (FIFCO), a Costa Rican beer company, Yunus Social Business (YSB), an organization founded by Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank (the "bank to the poor") and Peace Nobel laureate. This new social enterprise intended to fight malnutrition, focusing specially in children under two and pregnant women living in extreme poverty. To fulfill its mission, Nutrivida developed a line of highly nutritional foods to sell at low prices at low-income neighborhoods in San José's metropolitan area. It also planned to expand its distribution nationwide and, eventually, to other countries in Central America and the Caribbean. By late 2016, Nutrivida still failed to break even and turn a profit. Part of Nutrivida's strategy hinged on product distribution via a "Mums for Nutrition" (MANU, for its acronym in Spanish) network. However, after operating for three years, this channel continued to have minimal sales. Nutrivida's general manager, Anne Marie Nouel, had to determine the steps to take to boost the organization's sales and what to do with its MANU network to make Nutrivida financially sustainable.

This article explores a variety of ways employees are being engaged as social innovators in their companies or as co-creators in partnerships with other businesses, NGOs, and/or government agencies. They are engaged as intrapreneurs in company innovations contests, in partnerships with external social entrepreneurs, and in pro bono global service programs, and as members of innovation teams in organization-wide innovations. The study compares and contrasts four employee engagement platforms and assesses their impact on participating employees, companies, and communities from these efforts.

In June 2016, Sumayyah Sayed, a resident of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, decided to donate food to those who needed it through a sharing fridge for the full month of Ramadan. When she noted the extent of the need for more help, she turned to social media. What followed demonstrated the power of social media campaigns and the collective management of supply chains and perhaps initiated a new entrepreneurial venture. Within one month, the Facebook Inc. group Sayed had created to support her Ramadan Sharing Fridges initiative had 22,000 members, 165 donating fridges had been set up, and the story was creating waves in international media. What kind of entrepreneurial style was this? Was it sustainable? Was it an alternative model that could be adopted by others who aspired to set up business ventures, or was it a fluke?

Muskaan, a social enterprise based in Delhi, India, trained adults with intellectual disabilities to help bring them closer to mainstream society. The organization firmly believed that the "human mind is designed for learning," and that everyone, including those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, had the potential to succeed in doing great things in life. Muskaan had two revenue sources: grants, and income from the sale of goods produced by intellectually disabled craftspeople. In 2016, more than 11,000 Indian non-governmental organizations lost their licenses to receive foreign funding. Dr. Shanti Auluck, Muskaan's founder, worried that the funding needed for her business model might also soon dry up. To survive, grow, and ensure the sustainability of her social enterprise, Auluck had to change her business model and prepare a new business plan.

This case describes the challenges facing Jon Moussally, the CEO of TraumaLink, a four-year-old social venture that provided trauma first aid to victims of traffic injuries in Bangladesh, a country that had some of the most dangerous highways in the world but no formal emergency response system. Jon, a practicing emergency room physician and public health student, had been shocked by the chaotic traffic that he observed during a trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh, for a course on global health issues. Over the next 18 months, Jon and three partners-two fellow students and the Bangladeshi head of a local social venture organization-decided on a three-pronged approach: they would train community-based volunteers who lived or worked close to the highway to provide free basic trauma first aid; they would develop an easy-to-use 911-type software system to deploy volunteers quickly to a crash scene; and they planned to raise operating funds by selling advertising or subscriptions to companies in Bangladesh whose workers travelled the dangerous highways daily. By the fall of 2017, TraumaLink had been successfully launched along two sections of particularly dangerous highways. Their trained volunteers had been able to quickly and effectively provide first aid to victims of traffic injuries. The software had worked well to notify and deploy volunteers and collect data. However, Jon and his partners had not yet found sustainable, long-term sources of revenue, despite almost four years of trying. After an initial pilot phase in November 2014, the organization had been awarded $142,500 by the US Agency for International Development, but these funds would run out by the end of 2018, with little chance of another round. TraumaLink had proven that they could deliver emergency services and save lives, but could Jon and his partners figure out how to become financially sustainable so that they could continue to support and expand their services within Bangladesh and possibly beyond?

In this case, lessons from the Chicago Benchmarking Collaborative illustrate key principles of collaborative action and the importance of using data to achieve SMART goals. In 2015, the Chicago Benchmarking Collaborative (CBC) was a network of seven agencies in Chicago, Illinois, serving 12,000 low-income residents. Each of the agencies had early childhood, school-age children, and adult education programs. At the prompting of the Chicago Community Trust, they came together to (1) benchmark their education programs outputs and outcomes; (2) learn and share best practices through developing a common set of metrics and measurements and implementing these measurements into a case management software system; and (3) share the costs of the case management software system to be used for program evaluation and continuous quality improvement. Three aspects of CBC are particularly noteworthy. First, there are no joint program activities or clients among these agencies. Their exchange is limited to sharing data and other information. This makes CBC distinct from collaborations formed to begin a program or to advocate for a policy. Second, the group requires each agency to enter data on a timely basis and to set SMART goals based on the data reports. The agencies are held mutually accountable for their work to achieve their own SMART goals during the year and report on progress. Third, CBC used monetary incentives to ensure that data entry and SMART goal action remained a priority for each agency.

ABC (A Better Community) provided pro-bono and paid management consulting services to nongovernment organizations in mainland China. Founded in 2008, ABC had quickly expanded from a voluntary group in Beijing with 7 volunteers in to a well-organized NGO with several hundred volunteers operating in 4 cities, serving more than one hundred NGOs. However, the rapid development also brought many challenges to both the running of the organization and how to best achieve its social mission. Case number 2119.0

Beef production is not sustainable, but it can and should be. Large scale commercial beef farming imposes tremendous negative impacts on the environment by polluting the air, water, and soil. In contrast, sustainable farming uses responsible practices that protect the environment for future generations. But, are consumers really interested in sustainable beef? When consuming sustainable beef products, most reactions by consumers are: they taste great; they are produced without destroying the environment or threatening public health; and their sales support responsible farmers who choose to use sound agricultural practices. Thus, if a sustainable farm wanted to promote one of its beef products, and it had to choose between "grass-fed", "pasture-raised" or "organic" beef, which one would it choose, at what cost, and at what risk? Such a decision is difficult without knowing analytics. So, can business analytics be used to evaluate such a business decision? This case is about making hard decisions involving sustainability products, for which business analytics can play a significant role. The intent is also to educate the reader about sustainability and sustainable beef. The case introduces an entrepreneurial start-up that consistently and successfully promotes sustainable farming, and it's their emphasis on sustainability that makes the company unique and successful. The decisions involve the sustainability "stamps" assigned to beef products. One may recognize some of these stamps, such as the "organic" brand. The farm in the case produces a variety of sustainable products, but it is thinking about a marketing campaign to promote one of its product stamps. But, which one? That is a hard decision, and it is where business analytics can play a role. Before we launch into the "meat" of the case, some background on sustainability and sustainable beef would be useful.

In 2008, Du and Lu, two experienced professional volunteers passionate about improving the state of mental health and well being among Chinese youth, founded Growing Home in Beijing, China. The nonprofit organization has since evolved from teaching children that have migrated to big cities from rural areas, to focusing on developing bedtime stories particularly for children in rural residential schools. As the demand for Growing Home's program expands, they face a decision on the organization's next step forward. Despite struggling with conflicts such as a lack of expertise and experience in commercializing the program, and establishing relationships with the government and other NGOs, the team is determined to reach the later stages of an ambitious 7-stage timeline designed to scale the NGO's social impact, and ultimately create significant institutional changes within China's education system. Case number 2123.0

The case is set in March 2018. Neha Bhatia Ramdas, Director of Sales at Juntos Global, is visiting a prospective partner bank of her company in Singapore, which wants to expand its outreach amongst the unbanked population in South East Asia. The partner bank is not comfortable in sharing their customer data with Juntos, and Ramdas has been entrusted with the difficult task of convincing the partner bank to share their data with Juntos. Juntos specialises in deploying SMS based solutions powered by data analytics capabilities for financial service providers to help them serve their newly banked customers more efficiently. The Juntos SMS based platform helps the newly banked customers to build formal savings habits through behavioural science strategies by building a relationship of 'trust' with their customers. By creating trusting relationships between financial service providers and their customers based on the principles of Human Centred Design (HCD), Juntos was able to generate measurable increases in account usage in many of its projects. The Juntos business model was a partnership model, wherein the partner financial service was equally involved in the implementation of the Juntos solution, especially at the beginning of the project. Juntos used an agile implementation process for project implementation that was preceded by a useful ethnographic study that allowed Juntos to customise their solution for their partner clients. Juntos typically implemented pilot projets with their partners, before implementing large-scale projects. The flipside of this arrangement was the long sales cycle that was the primary impediment to Juntos success.

As the effects of climate change become more prominent, business needs to grapple with its own attitudes toward government. A more destructive physical environment requires a more nuanced relationship in which government is viewed as a partner in enabling and supporting markets rather than as a regulator that needs to be managed.