Yale School of Management - The Goldman Sachs Foundation
Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures
Announces National Business Plan Competition Results:
655 Nonprofit Organizations Enter Competition;
20 Are Selected to Final Round

New Haven, CT, February 19, 2003 - "The Yale School of Management - The Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures" today announced its selection of 20 nonprofit organizations to proceed to the final round of the National Business Plan Competition for Nonprofit Organizations.

The 20 finalists are in the planning stage, or early stages of operating income-generating business ventures. The 20 finalists will present their business plans to a panel of expert judges at the first Annual Conference and Awards Ceremony to be held on May 1-2, 2003, in downtown New York City at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. The judging panel will select four grand-prize winners, each of whom will receive $100,000 and four semi-finalists, each of whom will receive $25,000. In addition to cash awards, the winners will receive hundreds of hours of technical business planning consultations to assist their organizations in implementing their ventures.

The judging panel will consist of a diverse collection of experience and expertise that lends tremendous value to the Competition. It includes: Roger Brown, Executive Chairman of Bright Horizons Family Solutions; Chandy Chandrashekhar, Vice President of Goldman, Sachs & Co.; Catherine Clark, Director of the Research Initiative in Social Entrepreneurship and Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School; J. Gregory Dees, Faculty Director of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business; Gary Mulhair, Managing Partner of Global Partnerships and former President and CEO of Community Wealth Ventures and Pioneer Human Services (both nonprofit enterprises); Barry Nalebuff, the Milton Steinbach Professor at the Yale School of Management and a leading expert on competitive strategy; and Lynn Taliento, Principal of McKinsey & Company and co-founder and leader of the Firm's Global Nonprofit Practice.

Yale SOM Professor Sharon M. Oster, a leading authority on competitive strategy and nonprofit management and co-faculty director of The Partnership, explained, "We are enormously enthusiastic about the quality of these business proposals. Our evaluation team, comprised of Yale SOM alumni, Goldman Sachs employees, McKinsey & Company consultants, and other experts in the field had a most rewarding, yet challenging task. Though it was quite difficult to turn down plans that were truly superb, we expect many of these ventures will move forward with other sources of funding and project champions, and we hope that they return to our Competition next year."

Stanley J. Garstka, Deputy Dean of Yale's business school and co-faculty director of The Partnership added, "We are most excited for the next iteration of the Competition. The judges will have their hands full in deciding between these excellent plans."

About The Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures

The Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures was funded through combined grants totaling $4.5 million made by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The Goldman Sachs Foundation. 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.

About The Yale School of Management

The mission of the Yale School of Management is to educate leaders for business and society. The school prides itself on preparing men and women to combine rigorous business skills with a broader appreciation for the economic, social, and political factors that shape the global environment. 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. Since 1993, the Yale School of Management has been consistently rated #1 in Nonprofit Management among the nation's graduate management programs by U.S. News and World Report.

About The Goldman Sachs Foundation

The Goldman Sachs Foundation is a global philanthropic organization funded by The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. The Foundation's mission is to promote excellence and innovation in education and to improve the academic performance and lifelong productivity of young people worldwide. It achieves this mission through a combination of strategic partnerships, grants, loans, private sector investments, and the deployment of professional talent from Goldman Sachs. Funded in 1999, the Foundation has awarded grants in excess of $40 million since its inception, providing opportunities for young people in more than 20 countries.