Nonprofit Partnerships: The Spertus Institute

The Spertus Institute was founded in 1924 as the College of Jewish Studies in Chicago to train Jewish educators in higher Jewish education and to support the Jewish community. It was a time when the United States experienced a significant increase in the Jewish population. Undergraduates from other colleges could take Jewish studies courses at Spertus and receive credit at their home institutions.

In 1970, the College of Jewish Studies changed its name in honor of two benefactors, brothers Herman and Maurice Spertus. The Spertus brothers had fled Ukraine during the Russian Revolution and moved to Chicago, where they created a company that mass-produced steel picture frames. Herman and Maurice soon became community leaders and philanthropists in Chicago and remained active supporters of Spertus throughout their lives. To this day, the institute maintains a library and fine arts collection with donations from the brothers.

By the end of the 1980s, Spertus had shifted its focus fully to graduate education, dropping all undergraduate courses. Today, students from around the world enroll in Spertus’s accredited online masters and doctorate programs in Jewish studies and certificate programs in Jewish leadership and combating antisemitism. 

Award-Winning Headquarters

The Spertus Institute’s home is a stunning, LEED-certified skyscraper on Chicago’s South Michigan Avenue that has won multiple architectural and design awards since it opened in 2007. With enviable views of the city’s skyline, Grant Park, and Lake Michigan, the building has also provided a major stream of revenue from event space rentals. For more than a decade, business was brisk, with rentals for weddings and corporate events generating 25 to 30 percent of Spertus’s budget.

Then the pandemic brought in-person events to a halt, and rental revenue plunged to zero. Post-pandemic, event space rentals have been slow to come back. “As we were in the midst of our strategic plan, trying to advance the institution and support it in some new ways, we thought it was time to revisit that part of our operations,” says Spertus President and CEO Dean Bell.

So Spertus turned to the Golub Capital Board Fellows Program based in the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The Rustandy Center, along with students from the Net Impact student group, facilitates training and mentoring for MBA students who are selected for the program. Board fellows then serve as nonvoting board members during a seven-month term and complete a pro bono consulting project for their nonprofit partners.

“Booth students have a unique opportunity to leverage their skills outside the classroom,” says Wai-Sinn Chan, Rustandy Center senior director of nonprofit and civic engagement programs. “Our aim is not only to support students pursuing nonprofit engagement throughout their lives but to enable them to use their business skills now to improve the communities they serve.”

Board Fellows Mary Kircher, MBA ’24, and Ben Kurschner, MBA ’24, were matched with Spertus. Their assignment was to take an in-depth look at the institute’s event space rental business, balancing the need to increase revenues while prioritizing space for Spertus’s nonprofit programming.

“It wasn’t only maximizing revenue. We wanted the space to be in service to the institution,” says Spertus Dean and Chief Academic Officer Keren Fraiman. The goal was to craft a plan that respected the educational uses of the space and to help the Spertus board of trustees better understand the events business and the revenue that was flowing into the operation. Before the pandemic, when demand for event space was high, tensions sometimes arose over how to share space between the institute and the community.

The question for the board fellows was how Spertus could be more strategic about rentals in terms of pricing, staffing, and what type of events were best to pursue. “That’s what I think made it exciting for the fellows: They had to understand our academic offerings and how they relate to the events business,” Fraiman says. “They did these great analyses, like what’s the difference between weddings versus corporate events—things that we had a sense of but needed to know how to do them much better.”

Kircher noted that the project was unique because it did not focus on the traditional business question of how to maximize revenues based on current assets. It was clear that Spertus wanted to increase its revenues from its events space, she says, if it could be done in a way that still honored its programmatic mission.

Bell and Fraiman met with the fellows to give them background about Spertus, to talk about the institute’s goals and values, and to provide them with a mountain of data that had been collected but never used. The fellows also met with the staff of Venue SIX10, the events operations arm named after the building’s street address on South Michigan Avenue, to glean insights about their business.

Kurschner says the experience was valuable because they were exposed to the operational side of the nonprofit and had the opportunity to work with the institute’s leaders to understand their motivations, their views of growth, and the objectives they were trying to achieve.

Bell says one of the things he loved about the process was that Kircher and Kurschner clearly tried to understand Spertus’s educational mission, not just the project. “They engaged with so many parts of the institution, learned about what we do, what our priorities were,” he says. “But then they also dug into spreadsheets and analysis.”

Inside the World of Board Governance

Bell and Fraiman tapped Spertus Board Member Steve Wolff, MBA ’86, to guide Kircher and Kurschner through the process of participating in board meetings. Wolff spoke with them throughout the project’s term about what it means to serve on a board, how it functions, and some of the challenges and opportunities that arise.

“I think it was a little eye-opening for them to take a peek behind the curtain on how not-for-profits operate,” Wolff says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if both of them get involved as nonprofit board directors down the road.”

Kircher, who prior to Booth had worked as a high school teacher and at an educational nonprofit, says the opportunity to take part in board meetings, executive meetings, and committee meetings was one of the reasons she wanted to become a Board Fellow. “I definitely developed a deeper appreciation for how boards and nonprofit leadership interact,” she observes. “They set a really great example to learn from because their collaboration is really strong, and clearly the board is really involved.”

Kurschner agrees that observing the governance of the institute from a board-level perspective was quite educational. “Even just to be a fly on the wall as they discussed a lot of the significant operational objectives they were trying to hit, and the pros and cons of different avenues and how it impacts their financial trajectory as well as the mission and the success of the organization as a whole—that was nice to listen in on,” he says.

Project Outcomes

At the end of the program, Kircher and Kurschner shared their recommendations in a 59-page presentation to Spertus’s board of trustees. “What came out of it were recommendations for how we should think about rightsizing the business, what are the best types of events that fit in with our mission and our goals, but also in terms of net impact—and then what’s associated with that in terms of staffing and advertising. That was really valuable,” Bell says.

Because Kircher and Kurschner developed a deep relationship with the board during the program, their questions didn’t come across as threatening, Bell says—which made their final report more valuable than analyses Spertus had received in the past from consultants.

One of the report’s key findings was that by adding just a few larger corporate events each quarter, Spertus could get back to pre-pandemic revenue levels. The question about the best use of the facilities had been an ongoing topic of discussion in board meetings, Fraiman says. But Kircher and Kurschner’s presentation brought a new perspective that pushed the issue to a higher priority for the board.

“What I really liked is they took an interesting approach, both theoretical and practical as far as their ultimate recommendations,” Wolff says. “Now we fully have the support of the board to move forward,” Fraiman adds. Wolff noted that the project was such a success that the board incorporated the Fellows’ recommendations into the organization’s strategic plan for the next year.

Kircher recalls how gratifying it was to present to such a receptive board of trustees: “They were very much interested in our analyses in a real way, not just as an academic exercise,” she says. “That was a really great part of the experience.”

After graduating from Booth in June 2024, Kircher joined Bellwether, an education nonprofit that works with school districts and community organizations around the country. In that role, she sometimes conducts financial analysis, skills that she honed during her fellowship.

“The Board Fellows experience is a particularly good way to leverage what you’re learning as a business school student to also benefit local organizations,” Kircher says. “The matching of need and skill set in that program is really unique.”

After graduation, Kurschner joined the private equity firm Sunstone Partners, where he is now a senior associate. “This nonprofit exposure was something I’m grateful to have had during the MBA program,” he says. “You want to be able to participate and make the world better, but you also want to do it in a fashion that is high impact and has professional learnings as well.”

He says he was inspired by the board members’ commitment to a purpose that was higher than themselves and the meaning they derived from their board service. “It 100 percent made me want to serve on a nonprofit board in the future,” he says.

The Board Fellows Program was also a worthwhile opportunity for Spertus leaders to get a new strategic and analytical perspective on a major part of the institute’s business model. “The benefit for us is we were able to get outside expertise from really thoughtful business school students with diverse experiences that are not available to most institutions,” Bell says.