Congratulations to Pay It Forward, the new Wharton Graduate Association (WGA) Executive Board.  The slate claimed victory in last week’s WGA election and has an ambitious agenda with numerous social impact related initiatives:

• Replacing the core curriculum TAP project (a leadership project which for many students has become a source of humorous derision) with a community service project.
• Instituting an “adopt a non-profit” program whereby each cohort commits to working with a local non-profit over the course of the 2 year MBA program.
• Creating a “Business 101″ seminar during pre-term for students with non-traditional backgrounds.
• Expanding the Legal Aspects of Business & Ethics portion of the core curriculum.

Given the extent of Pay It Forward’s social impact focus, it was actually quite (pleasantly) surprising, at least to this second year observer, that they won.  I suppose the general lesson of the “pay it forward” philosophy is that there is a great deal of untapped goodness to humanity.  Apparently there is a nascent well of goodness in the Wharton community that showed up at the ballot box last week.

With any luck, this will be the start of a groundswell of change that will indeed begin to reshape the Wharton brand around educating socially responsible business leaders.  By initiating change now, we will all ”pay it forward” to future generations of students creating an institution committed to the idea that business for global good (as new Dean Robertson would say) is not just a catch phrase, but a professional commitment.

According to this month’s “Wharton Update”, a monthly email publication circulated on behalf of Dean Robertson, Wharton undergrads are pioneers on the social impact front.

“The newly formed Social Impact Consulting Group is one of the first pilot chapters in Net Impact’s new undergraduate initiative. The partnership will raise interest and awareness among Wharton undergraduates in how to make a social impact through business.”

The Social Impact Consulting Group is sending young business students out to work on non-profit consulting issues and to develop a sense of the importance of social responsibility in the context of business.  For many in this newest generation of business leaders, the need to balance social good and profit is an important component of how they will choose employers and how they will choose to manage.  It is nice to see Wharton’s undergrads acknowledged as one of the first groups admitted to this pilot program - with any luck, their pioneering enthusiasm will carry through the halls and influence their older (yet not always wiser) classmates! 

Nicholas Kristof has an inspiring column on the rise of social entrepreneurship in this past weekend’s New York times. He cites, among others, current Harvard Business School student Andrew Klaber, founder of Orphans Against Aids, as an example of a generational shift towards applying entrepreneurial solutions to global problems…

“Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways. Bill Drayton, the chief executive of an organization called Ashoka that supports social entrepreneurs, likes to say that such people neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry. If that sounds insanely ambitious, it is. John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan title their new book on social entrepreneurs “The Power of Unreasonable People.”

Dean Thomas Robertson published a great piece in the Financial Times earlier this week about the importance of social responsibility to the business school curriculum and Wharton’s efforts to be a center of innovation on these critical issues:

“Today we use terms such as “social impact” and “social responsibility” when discussing the ways in which businesses need to take into account not only their shareholders, but other stakeholders as well. Social responsibility is no longer relegated to the relatively small percentage of students who seek to work in the nonprofit sector. It has become integrated into our way of thinking in business education and in the coming years needs to be further developed…

…We would like to graduate students who are capable of generating financial returns, but at the same time who are concerned with social good, as this is part of the original mission of our school…

…We want them to be ethical and sensitive to corporate social responsibility issues. We hope they take a broader view and think about how their business decisions can contribute to the overall social good.”

Robertson had previously told the Associated Press that he intends to make Wharton “a force for good in the world.” The article also features comments from Net Impact’s Director, Liz Maw, who mentions that Wharton is hosting the conference next year.

Welcome to the new face of Wharton Social Impact!

In an on-going effort to showcase the efforts and activities of our club, we are relaunching our website in a decidedly new and conversational format.  Our goal is not only to be a resource for information, but to be an active forum for dialogue on issues of social and environmental responsibility, business ethics, and international development.  We will seek to highlight members of the Wharton community (and the global business community) doing extraordinary things to advance the integration of business and social good — and will not shy away for criticizing those in the same communities who could be doing more.

We hope to bring in the voices of current Wharton students, faculty, and alumni, and hope that those from other institutions and the business world at large will join in.  Welcome and we’re excited to begin this new conversation!

Last month a record 46 Wharton students and several administrators attended this year’s Net Impact Conference, held at Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Management in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition, six Wharton students were named finalists in the first-ever Project Pyramid Case Competition. The team, consisting of Lauren Clark, Ann Kim, Linda Lu, Anna Mohrman, Saket Saurabh, and Ruby Suga competed among 12 other finalist teams charged with producing tangible solutions to poverty-related conditions in society. Read more in a Wharton Journal article written by our own Ann Kim.