Opinion: Pursuing the Promise of a ‘Nasdaq for Nonprofits’

The New York Times profiles Lindsay Beck, a cancer survivor with charity experience and an M.B.A., and her nascent efforts to develop the equivalent of a stock market to finance nonprofits.

Ms. Beck tells Times business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin that she came up with the idea while pursuing her masters at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. She had previously started Fertile Hope, an organization that helped female cancer survivors with pregnancy, after her own bout with the disease.

A Nasdaq-style exchange could make nonprofit groups’ success or failure more transparent, steering more money to the most effective groups, she says. She has pursued the concept in earnest for the past year, meeting with executives at Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank and White House officials.

Ms. Beck’s vision “is very creative and visionary but it may take a long time to come,” said Alicia Glen, a managing director at Goldman who has helped develop the firm’s work in social-impact bonds. “It is a very laudable goal.”