Building Excellence With a Business School’s Philanthropic Partners

Business schools everywhere are committed to building excellence. But excellence demands enormous financial resources that exceed customary levels of funding whether it is for recruiting top students with scholarships and financial aid, attracting world-class faculty with strong compensation packages and generous research support, building state-of-the-art facilities that can provide the academic and technical environment to investigate and discover business theory and practice, or for developing cutting-edge curricula that will prepare the business leaders of tomorrow. This paper discusses the role of philanthropic partners — including corporations, foundations, and alumni — in creating not only a solid financial base which can support initiatives that spawn excellence but also strategic alliances with practitioner partners who can collaborate in a symbiotic manner to keep faculty and students on the leading edge of change. The paper will explore such alliances and present directions for building successful philanthropic partnerships among business schools in the U.S. and India.