Charles Ansbach

Lecturer Charles Ansbach has worked with major corporations nationally and internationally, representing not only their interests in discussions as donors to major nonprofits/NGOs, but also in appeals for support and partnership made by community groups. In those many interactions, he learned why most corporate CSR programs fail and how to fix them. He has learned what CSR directors must do to manage their programs inside corporate structures and the practical sides of serving effectively in that role. Ansbach was an early adopter of social entrepreneurism in the 1970s, before the name of the field became popular. He created one of the top five projects for the U.S. Labor Department under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, where he demonstrated the viability of taking select people from the unemployment ranks and developing new small businesses around their skills to take them from welfare rolls to the small business tax-payer rolls of their communities. Currently, Ansbach is working with companies and nonprofits on how to form profitable social impact partnerships and on innovative banking and investment groups to design new ways to engage corporate and institutional investors in the growth of the social entrepreneurism for mutual benefit. After serving nationally as a capital campaign director for Ketchum Inc., he opened Ansbach & Associates in 1985 to raise capital funding and provide management consulting for nonprofits and NGOs worldwide. He worked with world leaders, social innovators and major individual, corporate and foundation donor/investors to maximize the impact of their community actions. He sold that firm in 2012 to Skystone Ryan Inc., a global consultancy for NGOs, where he served as a managing partner. Ansbach is now part of a new firm designed to provide interim executive management services, business development and funding to nonprofits and social entrepreneurs, as well as corporations looking for profitable ways to address their social responsibility. He is a judge on the Dell Global Challenge for social entrepreneurs, serves on multiple boards, including the Global Center for Social Entrepreneurism at University of the Pacific, is a contributing author to Building Strong Nonprofits (Wiley, 2010) and is a global trainer/speaker on issues impacting the field. Ansbach earned a Graduate Fellowship in Theater Design from the Indiana University Bloomington, and a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.