Just out of college, Maggie Kane founded Raleigh, North Carolina's, first non-profit, pay-what-you-can eatery, A Place at the Table (the Table). Almost ten years later, the restaurant had served over 255,000 meals to people who could not afford the cost of a meal. Many in the community knew the Table as Maggie’s Place, which was unsurprising given that the restaurant’s success was tied to her vision, tireless work, personal story, media engagement, .....more

In September 2023, Dr. Prakash Tyagi, executive director of Gramin Vikas Vigyan Samiti (GRAVIS), reflected on GRAVIS’s journey from a humble mud hut in 1983 to a leading social enterprise managing 35 projects across the Thar Desert. Guided by Gandhian principles, GRAVIS had expanded from water conservation to health care, education, and women’s empowerment. However, rapid growth strained resources, raising concerns about funding sustainability, program .....more

<div style="font-size: 0.95em; line-height: 1.4;"><p align="justify">In June 2023, the Lotus Petal Foundation founder and his management team were discussing plans to significantly scale up the capacity of the Lotus Petal Foundation school Lotus Petal Senior Secondary School. The school was a significant initiative for the foundation. The founder hoped to accommodate 10,000 underprivileged children in an expanded Lotus .....more

In March 2024, Anil Nair, the CEO of St. Jude ChildCare Centres (St. Judes), Mumbai, India, was preparing to meet the board of trustees with a strategy. St. Judes, an NGO, had two initiatives: 1) Providing a free ‘Home Away from Home’ (HAH) to under-privileged children undergoing cancer treatment and their accompanying families. Nair looked forward to adding 200 more children at their newest centre, but the demand for places was still higher than .....more

In the spring of 2024, suicide prevention non-profit organization Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) was looking forward to the future. With its CEO’s impending retirement, succession planning had become imperative. If the organization wanted to grow rather than plateau, it would need ongoing strategic leadership and organizational transformation, with a particular focus on fostering cohesion and collaboration between staff and volunteers. SOS had to consider .....more

The Indian Women Pilots’ Association (IWPA) was a non-governmental organization founded in 1967 by trailblazing women in Indian aviation. The association, sustained through membership dues, sponsorships, and donations, provided interest-free loan scholarships to help women pursue advanced training. It also organized seminars, educational programs, and international collaborations to promote aviation awareness and training. IWPA had been instrumental .....more

In 2022, Manisha Pande, the co-founder and managing director of Village Ways (VW), a responsible tourism company in India, was facing financial challenges which threatened to wipe out her company’s 16 years of growth. VW offered personalized trips within India and in neighbouring countries, fostering the well-being of rural communities while limiting environmental damage. But then the COVID-19 pandemic stopped tourism worldwide and created significant .....more

This exercise provides a structured framework for introducing business students to supervised machine learning (SML), unsupervised machine learning (UML), and reinforcement machine learning (RML). The exercise revolves around applying these techniques to evaluate harassment policies, offering a hands-on and practical approach to understanding how machine learning (ML) works in real-world scenarios. The exercise is suitable for undergraduate classes .....more

This exercise explores the operational and strategic challenges faced by Philanthropy Insight (PI), a Canadian non-profit organization founded by Emily Hayes, which aims to provide donors with information to make informed giving decisions. Despite significant growth in website traffic, PI struggles with chronic underfunding, leading Hayes to continually finance the deficit from her personal savings. The case delves into PI’s data management issues, .....more

In May 2024, the founder of Keepsie Kits was planning for the future of her sustainable travel products company, based in Toronto, Canada. She had launched the venture three years earlier to address the environmental impact of disposable, single-use, heavy travel products. She also wanted to educate business and leisure travellers about reducing their environmental footprint. After starting Keepsie Kits in the aftermath of the COVID-19 global pandemic, .....more