黑料社

Richard Day, MBA 鈥�20, served as a Golub Capital Board Fellow at the University of 黑料社 of Business in 2019-20 for Renaissance Social Services, a nonprofit in Chicago that provides outreach, supportive housing, and other services to prevent and end homelessness. Nine months after his fellowship, Day was voted onto the board of Renaissance, where he continues to serve as a director.

Can you tell us about your background 鈥� where you grew up and where you went to college?
I grew up in the Chicago suburb of Glenview. I went to Washington, D.C. to attend college at Georgetown University.

What was your first job after Georgetown? 
I worked for a company called Corporate Executive Board (CEB), now part of Gartner, advising on best practices in corporate strategy.

How did you get interested in the issue of housing affordability?
I started to get a little bit radicalized about housing affordability sometime between the beginning of college and the four years I was working at my first corporate job.

Living in D.C. and watching the cost of rent go up every year, I was frustrated that so many people were struggling to find housing, but the city made it so hard to build the new units needed to accommodate both new and longtime residents. My roommates and I hated how much we were paying to live in an apartment building that felt like a college dorm, but if we moved to a neighborhood, we鈥檇 compete against a family for a rowhouse. So, there was a literal, physical version of this, in addition to understanding and seeing how big of an economic issue housing affordability is.

Did you have any experience working with nonprofits prior to your board fellowship at Chicago Booth?
Yes. It鈥檚 a funny story. I did policy debate in high school and then at Georgetown for two years. A year or two after college graduation, I was riding the elevator to the gym in a ratty old Georgetown debate shirt, and this guy pulled on my shirt sleeve saying, 鈥淗ey, they鈥檙e starting an urban debate league in D.C. [to bring debate to D.C. public schools].鈥�

It turns out that the guy who grabbed my shirt was the executive director of the Washington Urban Debate League. I was introduced to the other members of the board who were getting the nonprofit off the ground. The fact that I was a recent debater who could relate a bit more to some of the kids and was willing to do the books for the organization was justification enough to [put] me on the board.

Why did you choose to go to business school at Booth? Was the Golub Capital Board Fellows Program (BFP) a factor in your decision?
One of the clients I worked with closely at CEB was a Booth alumnus who was engaged with the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at Booth. I reached out to him because he was a mentor and a client, and I figured he might have some good advice about applying.

I was particularly excited about Booth because I had started down this nonprofit board service [trajectory]. I was interested in the Board Fellows Program (BFP), and my mentor was really enthusiastic about Booth and connecting me with the program. So, I knew Booth had really invested in and prioritized. I had a mentor who cared about it, and with the BFP and coursework at Booth, I鈥檝e stayed plugged into that work, and that鈥檚 been really rewarding.

Could you tell us about the project that you did during your fellowship with Renaissance Social Services?
The project helped convince me that I wanted to stay with Renaissance. Renaissance works on affordable housing, providing wrap-around social service support for folks in permanent, supportive housing and rapid rehousing situations.

Renaissance asked me and a classmate to build a social return-on-investment estimate. The idea was to financially quantify the impact that the public and private dollars going to Renaissance were having on people鈥檚 lives in the community.

You cannot quantify the value of having a door that locks behind you when you go to sleep at night, or not having to move when you get evicted and pull your kids out of school. But you can quantify the impact of lower health care costs because people can take care of themselves, have a stable place to live, and make their doctor鈥檚 appointments. You can quantify things like lower criminal justice expenses because people who are unhoused are more likely to be victims and victimize others. You can quantify the fact that shelter beds are expensive, too.

So, we used Renaissance鈥檚 financials and academic research that had been done in Chicago to look at the impact on health care and other social costs.

The other big piece of this was understanding and modeling the value of homelessness prevention. One of the things Renaissance does as an agency is get money to families who are at a high risk of eviction. Not all of them will lose their homes if they don鈥檛 get help from the city. But if you鈥檙e going to be honest about the social return-on-investment calculations, you have to do the math to understand what the share is that would be evicted. Even though the number is a relatively small share, the ability to spend a couple of hundred bucks to keep someone in their home, help them get over that medical injury or car breaking down, or whatever else happens in life, there are incredible human being benefits. There are obvious financial benefits, and it was exciting and rewarding to get to build the model to show it.

And what were the key conclusions, in terms of the social return on investment, from Renaissance?
At the time, Renaissance had three programming streams: 1) permanent, supportive housing for individuals, 2) permanent, supportive housing for families with kids, and 3) the homelessness prevention arm, the smallest of the three.

The conclusion was that the social return on investment for all three was positive, primarily driven by huge health care costs that we鈥檙e avoiding by keeping people housed. The impact on individuals and families was positive, but homelessness prevention was the one that stood out.

It was helpful for Renaissance because it was a nice way to make a case for funding and supporting their programs. I stood at fundraisers to talk through those numbers and it鈥檚 been compelling for raising money. But it was also helpful in terms of how we thought about what we wanted the organization to focus on and prioritize internally.

It鈥檚 unusual for a fellow to be asked to join the full board right after graduation. Was this related to your prior nonprofit board experience?
I think that鈥檚 true. I also think I was engaged over the course of the year, paid attention as a board fellow, and was at least semi-useful during the year that I was there.

Renaissance has some great opportunities but also has its share of challenges. It鈥檚 something I wanted to stay involved in, so I signed on as a permanent board member after business school to stay involved in the organization.

Over the last few years, I鈥檝e helped coordinate the marketing and development work for Renaissance. As the organization has grown, we face a different set of questions and challenges.

Where do you work now, and is social impact work part of your role?  
I work at Boston Consulting Group, where half of my time is spent on growth strategy work. The other half is a blend of public sector work that we do for state and local governments, work that we do for nonprofits in other contexts, or pro bono work.

In your overall MBA experience, how would you rate the BFP in terms of your learning?
The program was important. It is hard to make an MBA hands-on in some ways, particularly as you think about moving from being good at your job to understanding, overseeing, or managing organizations.

Being able to sit and absorb information that you didn鈥檛 generate or produce yet informs decisions that you have to make or weigh in on when you鈥檙e not necessarily the most informed person in the room is an invaluable experience for MBA students.

Listening carefully and thoughtfully, then expressing an opinion in the right, limited dose as part of an executive committee or a board is something you need to be able to do as you grow up. I would say that is an important role that becomes even more important over time. And the fellowship is a healthy way to be able to get some reps in that context.

And are there other areas where you felt like you had a chance to really grow and develop through the BFP in terms of what you were able to do?
Yes, I think part of that is being on the hook for something that someone needs and is expecting from you in a professional setting. It鈥檚 a good way to iterate back and forth between the academic and the professional setting.

Another thing is that it鈥檚 easy to get trapped in a bubble in business school. But being pulled out every month to be on the West Side for board meetings, to interact with a wider set of people who are working on important issues in Chicago, to meet the staff, and to be at the events was a good reminder that business school is a very small, very unusual place, and it鈥檚 useful to be putting your shoulder to bigger and more important things across the city.