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Corporate Social Responsibility
News
5.20.2004 ET
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VolunteerMatch Wins Yale-Goldman Sachs Foundation's Business Plan Competition For Nonprofits
(CSRwire) SAN FRANCISCO, CA - VolunteerMatch is the winner of the Grand Prize
in the Second National Business Plan Competition for Nonprofit
Organizations, one of only four nonprofit organizations selected this year
by The Yale School of Management-Goldman Sachs Foundation to receive the
prestigious award. In addition to a cash award of $100,000, VolunteerMatch
will also receive hundreds of hours of technical business planning
consultation to aid the continued development and success of its corporate
service.
"We are absolutely thrilled to receive the Business Plan Award from Yale
and the Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures," said Deborah Dinkelacker,
interim president of VolunteerMatch. "It is a resounding endorsement of
our efforts to help engage American workers in volunteer service, and an
incredible boost for our goal of bringing the needs of local communities
to the attention of volunteers everywhere."
VolunteerMatch's winning Business Plan focuses on the organization's
web-based corporate service, which is designed to manage, maximize, and
measure employee volunteer programs. Created to meet the needs of leading
corporations that recognize the business and social value of community
involvement, VolunteerMatch's corporate service helps fulfill business
goals for community outreach; assists employees in searching and signing
up for local volunteer opportunities; and measures volunteer
participation.
"We are enormously enthusiastic about the quality of these ventures," said
Yale SOM Professor Sharon M. Oster, a leading authority on competitive
strategy and nonprofit management and co-faculty director of The
Partnership. "We are quite hopeful that this year's award recipients will
successfully leverage our prize money to gain incremental funding that
will allow them to further their business goals."
The Second National Business Plan Competition attracted 551 entries from
nearly every state in the country and all types of organizations both
large and small. The competition and evaluation process lasted nearly a
year, and included several rounds of evaluation enlisting Yale School of
Management faculty, alumni, and current MBA students; McKinsey & Company
consultants and Goldman Sachs professionals. Evaluation criteria used to
determine the merits of the VolunteerMatch business plan included its
business model feasibility, marketability, Financial Return on Investment,
Social Return on Investment, fundability, management team, performance
benchmarks, the alignment of the financial and social goals of the venture
and nonprofit organization, as well as risk assessment and contingency
plans.
For more information on VolunteerMatch and its award-winning
corporate service, visit www.volunteermatch.org.
About VolunteerMatch
VolunteerMatch is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help everyone
find a great place to volunteer, and offers a variety of online services to
support a community of nonprofit, volunteer and business leaders committed
to civic engagement. Since 1998, this community has helped thousands of
nonprofits attract nearly 1,500,000 volunteer referrals. VolunteerMatch is
the recipient of Webby Awards for "Activism" and "Services," and has been
recognized for its accomplishments by The White House and the Smithsonian
Institution.
About The Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures
The Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures brings together three strands of the
Yale School of Management's teachings--entrepreneurship, business skills,
and social responsibility--to nonprofit organizations, infusing its
program with the philosophy that superb business and management skills are
a critical ingredient for leadership in every sector of the
economy-private, public, and nonprofit. Funded through combined grants
totaling $6 million made by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The Goldman
Sachs Foundation, The Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures educates
nonprofits about nonprofit enterprise, serves as a mechanism for
capitalizing promising profit-making ventures with financial support, and
provides intellectual capital to build the practice of social
entrepreneurship in the nonprofit sector at-large. The Partnership grew
out of the partners' growing concern that nonprofits increasingly find the
need to enter the marketplace to generate new revenues beyond their
philanthropic activities, and need guidance and resources to do so.
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