Last week, over 150 nonprofit CEOs convened at Harvard Business School to study how to incorporate hard business insights into the daily operations of their organizations. The Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management program, now in its 18th year, gives nonprofit leaders from all over the world access to HBS faculty and invites them to explore how formal training in customer management, fiscal management, change management and strategy can help them more effectively achieve their societal objectives.
The program is run by Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Initiative, which aims to incorporate social change into the school’s MBA curricular and extracurricular offerings. Social enterprise is woven into the HBS MBA first-year core curriculum and second-year students are able to choose from a number of social enterprise-themed elective courses including courses like “Entrepreneurship in Education Reform,” “Sustainable Cities: Finance, Design and Innovation” and “Managing Social Enterprise.” Social entrepreneurs are also able to enter the Social Venture Track of the HBS Business Plan Contest and participate in a range of social impact clubs like the Harbus Foundation, the nation’s only foundation run by MBA students.
The Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management program is one of a number of Executive Education courses offered by HBS. These offer lifelong learning opportunities to business leaders and nonprofit executives, letting them tap into the cutting edge research and case studies developed by HBS professors.
