M.B.A.s who want to save the world

Even “non-conventional” doesn’t fully capture just how different that way of life can be. After doing an M.B.A. at McMaster University, Andrew Conte found himself in what he describes as a “mundane” job in the health care industry, marketing and selling computer equipment. In 2005, through MBAs Without Borders, he took a job in Sierra Leone, spending a year distributing malaria-fighting mosquito nets. He worked to build and fill a supply chain, getting the nets into pharmacies, and marketed the nets, doing things such as advertising through national media during the World Cup—an entirely new approach to distributing and selling the anti-malarial devices. Next, he travelled to Rwanda, where he worked with an American NGO that had built a clinic to serve women with HIV and AIDS. Conte reworked the struggling clinic’s business plan to help integrate it into Rwanda’s state health insurance plan. Both projects used his business training to “find a more sustainable way of doing things,” says Conte, who has just returned from a year doing development work in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Conte is typical of social entrepreneurs who believe in using the power of business and the free market to solve the world’s social ills. Dehtiar ultimately sees the opportunity to create an all-important middle class in the developing economies of Africa and Latin America. “M.B.A.s have such a vital role in helping build up and create opportunities and jobs in these countries,” he says. Companies are also starting to catch some of this enthusiasm. MWB recently started a program with Deloitte Consulting in the U.S. Before starting their new jobs, the company’s newly hired M.B.A.s are offered a chance to spend a month in the field at an MWB project.

The big roadblock for many students who want to do an M.B.A. in social entrepreneurship is still the lack of funding. Scholarships can be hard to come by, and big donors to fund them are in short supply. One of the big supporters in the field is Canadian-born Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay, who launched the Skoll Foundation, which invests in social entrepreneurs. It founded the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford, where it offers scholarships. But the field needs more angel investors like Skoll, and more time to develop. Sauder’s Tansey says that while there is interest in a program at UBC, it will take a number of years to build it up and recruit necessary staff.

Faced with a shortage of funds, Baker, the social entrepreneurship M.B.A. hopeful, did what any good entrepreneur does, and came up with a novel way to try to raise tuition to study at Oxford (he applied too late to be considered for a Skoll scholarship). The result was a website, 3bucksforbrendan.com, where he solicited $3 donations from individuals. As an added bonus, he planned to cut up his Oxford degree and send a tiny piece to everyone who gave him money. Over the summer, he raised $11,000 (as well as some international media attention)—“a very humbling amount of money for people to have invested in me,” he says. But, he adds, “quite a long way to being able to afford the tuition and living costs in Oxford.” Baker ended his campaign late last month, and put his plans for an M.B.A. in social entrepreneurship on hold for a year. He plans to apply to more schools and hopes to land a scholarship next time around. As for the money he’s raised? He’ll donate it, of course, likely to Engineers Without Borders and Doctors Without Borders.