The Imperative of Positive Impact: Nonprofits Must Serve the Human Condition
January 2025
By Jay Jakub,
Executive Director, Economics of Mutuality Foundation
Chief of Staff, Mutual Value Labs & Mutual Value Investments
Board of Directors | Secretary, Human Flourishing Foundation
In a world plagued by compounding crises nonprofits must meet one fundamental standard: improving the human condition in a meaningful and measurable way.
At the Economics of Mutuality Foundation, we don’t just talk about impact—we design for it, at scale. Unlike many nonprofits, we are led by business and investment professionals who approach global challenges as conscientious allocators of resources, leveraging business and investment insights – and partnering with academia – to help mitigate some of the world’s most pressing systemic problems.
Centers of Excellence: Scaling Knowledge and Impact
Changing the way business education is taught is central to how we deliver value by equipping the next generation of business leaders to drive change over time. It’s also where new content about how ‘mutual value’ can be created and sustained can be codified to insure against becoming just another ‘fad’ with a sell by date.
To expand our impact, the Foundation has embarked on an ambitious multi-year initiative to collaboratively establish Centers of Excellence (CoEs) at leading business schools around the world. These Centers are filling gaps on how mutuality (benefiting all stakeholders), when practically applied to business and investing, creates superior measurable value, content for teaching, and supports those applying the Economics of Mutuality (EoM) operating model to their biggest challenges.
Rotterdam Center for the Economics of Mutuality, Erasmus University, Netherlands (co-created 2022; now independently funded/led): Focuses on the commercial application of EoM metrics and management practices to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—a critical driver of global economic growth.
Asia Economics of Mutuality Center, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea (launching Spring 2025): Will address mutuality and sustainable finance, contextualizing EoM for Asia, and acute challenges like aging demographics.
Nordic Economics of Mutuality Center, Norwegian School of Economics Brandinnova Center, Norway (launching end of 2025, TBC): Will focus on the role of purpose in driving superior performance, financial exclusion, and developing leadership for sustainable business and investment practices.
Further collaborative discussions are ongoing in the U.S., South America, East Africa and Southeast Asia, to create a global network of purpose-driven partners to advance mutual value creation as a better approach to seeing, doing and teaching business and investment.
Mutual Value Labs: Translating Knowledge into Action
The Foundation owns Mutual Value Labs (MVL), a Swiss-based consultancy with a global remit that helps businesses operationalize mutuality through new metrics and management practices, developing data-driven business cases. Together with the Foundation and its academic partners, MVL turns business data and insights into teaching content that can be integrated into university curricula. Such practical cases provide the basis on which the EoM approach is taught through virtual Executive Education offerings at Oxford University and elsewhere that now includes through the Foundation ‘train-the-trainer’ courses for professors following a successful pilot at Mexico’s Tec de Monterrey. By aligning the work of the new Centers of Excellence with practical expertise in Mutual Value Labs, we aspire to apply research-generated insights to global business strategies. This dual approach allows us to scale impact while staying grounded in business acumen and academic rigor.
Call to Action
The world doesn’t need more nonprofits—it needs nonprofits that deliver greater practical, measurable impact, working humbly together rather than as unconnected competitors. Organizations that are laser-focused on advancing the human condition, leveraging resources strategically and scaling solutions to systemic challenges are what we all need - and are the kind of partners we seek. The African proverb: “If you want to go fast, walk alone, if you want to go far, walk together” applies in the nonprofit space just as it does in every walk of life.
At the EoM Foundation, we’re on a journey to prove that the false choice between profit and doing good can be replaced with mutual value creation, a model that benefits business and society alike. Mutual value is better and can even be more profitable than pursuing financial value alone, provided we focus on the means – how we treat others – rather than just on the ends, extracting value for ourselves.
Let’s challenge the status quo and reimagine a more complete capitalism. Let’s work together to transform business and investing for the common good, but in ways that are also good for business and investors. We can have it both ways in a world where every nonprofit contributes meaningfully to the human condition.
