The Yale School of Management - the Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures has announced the selection of twenty nonprofit organizations to proceed to the final round of its Third National Business Plan Competition for Nonprofit Organizations.

Now in the early stages of operating income-generating ventures, the finalists will spend the next three months working with business planning consultants and Yale School of Management students to strengthen and finalize their business plans. In June, the finalists will present those plans to a panel of judges at the Third Annual Conference and Awards Ceremony, where the four grand-prize recipients will receive $100,000 each and four runners-up will receive $25,000 each. In addition to the cash awards, the winners will receive hundreds of hours of business planning consultations to assist them in implementing their ventures.

"The partnership continues to reach thousands of nonprofits interested in exploring the growing field of social entrepreneurship," said Stanley J. Garstka, deputy dean of the Yale School of Management and co-faculty director of the partnership. "The outstanding response we've received, coupled with wonderful anecdotes from entrants to each National Business Plan Competition, confirms our original hypothesis that nonprofits are engaging successfully in for-profit ventures both to fulfill their missions and generate funds to meet their financial needs."

Funded by grants from the Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures educates nonprofits about nonprofit enterprise, promotes promising profit-making ventures with financial support, and provides consulting to build the practice of social entrepreneurship in the nonprofit sector.

For a complete report on this year's entrants and their ventures, see: http://www.ventures.yale.edu/statusreport_third_competition.asp.