The Case Foundation reflects Steve and Jean Case's heartfelt commitment to address complex social and business challenges. Founded in 1997, the Foundation is particularly focused on three strategies that help businesses succeed by encouraging collaboration, supporting successful leaders, and fostering entrepreneurship in the non-profit sector.
The foundation addresses the absence in the non-profit sector of market forces that help outstanding business entrepreneurs succeed. Inefficiency frustrates the efforts of many social entrepreneurs the Cases have worked with. Often, organizations with a shared mission compete counter-productively for grant money, rarely taking advantage of opportunities for cooperation to achieve common goals.
The Case Foundation invests its time and money in organizations and initiatives that are committed to collaboration. In 1999, Steve and Jean spearheaded PowerUP, a partnership between several leading IT companies, youth serving organizations, and foundations to create a network of nearly 1,000 community technology centers for underserved youth across the country.
Jean and Steve were also instrumental in founding Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure (ABC2), an entrepreneurial non-profit created shortly after Steve's brother Dan was diagnosed with brain cancer. ABC2 itself collaborates with The Brain Trust Initiative, an alliance between brain disease organizations working to enhance cooperation among non-profits, government agencies, and medical professionals, so progress can be made more quickly.
Jean has also played an active role in re-energizing the America's Promise Alliance, a collaborative network of organizations and institutions that are inspiring the collective power of communities to help deliver the essential building blocks young Americans need to succeed.
Having the right leadership is critical to any organization's success, so Jean and Steve have invested the resources of their Foundation and their own time into developing outstanding leadership for the social sector.
Many social entrepreneurs face significant organizational challenges—increased capital needs, board development, new talent acquisition, marketing, and communications updates—just as they are ready to grow. The Case Foundation works closely with its grantees, ensuring that their leadership has all the necessary professional and personal resources.
The Cases and their Foundation staff have adopted a "hands-on" approach to their partnerships with grantees; financial assistant is just one facet of the integrated relationship the Foundation seeks to create with its investments.
The Case Foundation also encourages entrepreneurship in the organizations it backs, facilitating scalable, sustainable impact. In particular, the Foundation fosters entrepreneurial business models that can generate a recurring revenue stream, reducing non-profit reliance on grants.
The Cases help develop entirely new breeds of organizations, including non-profits that couple grants with earned income and "not-only-for-profits," a relatively new type of venture that satisfies important societal goals while generating sustainable revenues.
