Global Impact: Managing Corporate Giving

Global Impact is a US registered non-profit organisation dedicated to 'assuring help for the world's most vulnerable'. Representing more than 50 of the most respected US-based global charities, including CARE, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontiere, and World Vision, it raises funds for its charity members in workplaces across the US and overseas. Facing a decline in giving campaigns in the early 1990s, Global Impact increased its attention to private sector and corporate giving. The case examines how this non-profit organisation re-positioned itself between the corporate world and the global charity community, developing services to meet the needs of its new private sector-based donors, while continuing to serve its overall not-for-profit mission. Between 1995 and 2006, its charity revenues grew from $6 million to $141 million. The case begins in 1993 as a new CEO is hired, and the governing Board transitions from one dominated by charity member representatives, to one with broader private sector representation.

The case supports a rich in-class comparative discussion of differences and similarities between business and the social sector, highlighting how social, political and business constraints vary across sectors. The case illustrates best practice in business/social sector collaboration, particularly in the humanitarian and disaster relief context. This case is also a strategy case, profiling the entrepreneurial spirit of a management team driven by a non-profit mission, that responds to adverse market conditions (declining donations) by re-positioning the ?business? (charity fund-raising) to capture emerging opportunities in the private and corporate sector.