Goldman Sachs' five-year, $100 million philanthropic initiative to provide practical business and management education to 10,000 women around the globe recently celebrated its first anniversary and over 1,200 women were either enrolled in, or graduated from sponsored certificate programs. The...

Gilead Sciences, the U.S. leader in HIV/AIDS medicines, with global sales of $5.4 billion in 2009, had undertaken several innovative actions to make its anti-viral products available to over 100 low- and middle-income countries. Having reached nearly 680,000 patients by the middle of 2009, the...

As Acumen Fund, a global venture philanthropy firm, moves forward with an investment portfolio exceeding $22 million, it runs into two critical measurement problems. First, how should it track the performance of each investment when its interest is not just the bottom line, but also social...

Acumen Fund is a global venture capital firm with a dual purpose: it looks for a return on its investments, and it also seeks entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty. This case examines Acumen's new projects in Kenya. The organization's investment committee and its chief investment officer,...

Founded in 1999, Root Capital had loaned $150 million to nearly 250 small and growing businesses, mainly in Latin America. In 2009, as the organization launched a five-year, $55 million capital campaign, it had to determine a strategic path going forward in keeping with its goal of achieving...

A U.S. government agency, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), provides aid to developing countries, focusing on poverty reduction through economic growth. It measures results through an economic rate of return based on increases in farmer incomes anticipated over twenty years. As MCC and...

Founded as a for-profit microfinance company, Equitas had acquired nearly a million clients in the short two years since it was founded. The founder, Vasu, and his management team wished to accelerate the already impressive spurt to 3 million clients in the next two years. The case describes the...

The case describes the effort of Merck, a global leader in pharmaceuticals, in making available its medicines to the poor. The challenge for the company (or for that matter, any pharmaceutical company) is how to integrate its business strategy with its corporate social responsibility, especially...