SOM Alum Andrea Levere on How MBAs Can Help Non-Profits Increase their Impact

Andrea Levere (MBA ’83), president emerita of Prosperity Now, gave a presentation hosted by SOM’s Economic Development club on her report “Blueprint for Enterprise Capital,” which examines the role philanthropic equity can play in enabling sustainable growth for non-profits—and how MBAs can help. 

“Blueprint for Enterprise Capital” addresses how non-profit organizations lack access to growth equity and therefore struggle to invest in the necessary resources, such as people and systems, to implement their visions. Lack of access to long-term, net asset financing commonly plagues non-profit organizations. They cannot effectively match sources and uses of funds with their short-term resources, resulting in slow capacity growth. Andrea explained the importance raising equity-like funding, especially in the post-pandemic environment, as many organizations need to stabilize or significantly grow their operations.

Andrea also stressed how philanthropic organizations generally do not leverage their internal financial capacity to align capital with their organizational objectives. Her parting message to the group of SOM students was, “there is an opportunity for MBAs to use their financial skills to help non-profits access capital and enable sustainable growth. In a world where students increasingly want to have an impact, this is an opportunity to reduce inequality by increasing access to services for under-served communities.”

Please see the feature article on the PSE homepage for more about Andrea’s work on Enterprise Capital.