MIT Sloan professor backs Obama call for "results-oriented" nonprofits

Andrew Wolk attends White House event promoting social innovation programs
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(Business Wire)--
An MIT Sloan professor invited to a White House event last week where President
Barack Obama unveiled new ways to support grassroots organizations wants to help
meet the President`s call for "results-oriented" efforts in meeting social
goals. Implementing rigorous ways to measure program success, says MIT Sloan
School of Management Senior Lecturer Andrew Wolk, can benefit not only social
innovation and communities, but MBA programs and MBA students anxious to combine
classroom lessons with socially meaningful work in the field.

"In every talk and speech I give, one theme really resonates," says Wolk, the
founder and CEO of Root Cause, a nonprofit in Cambridge, MA, that seeks to
advance social innovation. "That theme is, `What works?` There is a very strong
desire to move away from unrigorous ways of measuring attempts to deal with
social issues and to get much more serious about rewarding things that actually
make progress -- and to stop investing in those that don`t."

President Obama set that same tone at the June 30 event, where he outlined steps
"to find the most promising non-profits in America. We'll examine their data and
rigorously evaluate their outcomes," Obama said. "We'll invest in those with the
best results that are most likely to provide a good return on our taxpayer
dollars."

Academic institutions in general and MBA programs in particular are
well-positioned to work toward that goal, said Wolk. Universities, he said, are
"one of our greatest unleveraged assets in this area. Students, for example, are
the equivalent of a massive volunteer workforce that has not been utilized well
in the community. But the most significant opportunity may lie in developing
ways to take social innovations being developed in academic settings out of the
classroom and into communities for the greater good. Students and faculty are
working all kinds of interesting technologies and concepts that can help solve
serious social problems. We need to find better ways to get that potential into
the field, to apply it, and to measure its success."

In his class at MIT Sloan, Wolk requires students to include performance
measurement as they develop social innovation programs. Such measures are
routine in the private sector, but not always in the nonprofit world, he said.
"Why can a state call for a clear business plan before giving a major industry a
lot of money, but make it so relatively easy to apply for grants if you`re a
nonprofit?"

Wolk said MBAs want to be able to apply their business training to help
government and nonprofit groups set and meet performance standards for social
programs. "A lot of people in both government and the nonprofit sector are
recognizing that they need the help of MBAs," he said. "MBA programs sometimes
don`t recognize that a new generation is emerging that cares equally about
earning a living and how they do so. Every top MBA program needs to offer a
comprehensive package that allows students to have a career and to do greater
good."

MIT Sloan
Paul Denning, 617-253-0576
Director of Media Relations
Fax: 617-253-5875
denning@mit.edu
or
Patricia Favreau, 617-253-3492
Assistant Director of Media Relations
Fax: 617-253-5875
pfavreau@mit.edu

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