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.

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.

VolunteerMatch

VolunteerMatch

VolunteerMatch believes everyone should have the chance to make a difference. As the Web's largest volunteer engagement network, serving over 122,000 participating nonprofits, 100 network partners, and 13 million annual visitors, VolunteerMatch offers unique, award-winning solutions for individuals, nonprofits and companies to make this vision a reality. Since its launch in 1998, VolunteerMatch has helped the social sector attract more than $13 billion worth of volunteer services. Learn more about VolunteerMatch at VolunteerMatch.org, and follow @VolunteerMatch.

 

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