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Bryan Preston, CEO of the Back Office Cooperative, leads several large human service providers through the process of building a shared-services platform to leverage scale and efficiencies. This successful collaboration matches the business case for restructuring against the constraints of mission-driven enterprises.

The case seeks to demonstrate how collaboration, scalability, and leadership interact in a nonprofit organization to produce desirable outcomes from which other organizations, leaders, and resource providers might learn.

As the move from the business incubator loomed, Abdul Khan had to decide where his business should relocate to. ACEES Group LLC, a small consulting firm, had grown from three friends working out of Abdul Khan’s house to a 20-person firm generating more than a million dollars in revenue within five years. This growth had necessitated the need for a larger and more prominent place. Although Abdul knew he did not want to renew the lease at the incubator, and he did not want to move his business too far from its current location, but the decision he had to make was whether ACEES Group should lease a commercial place or buy its own property. He was particularly torn because the real estate prices had fallen considerably, and were now on the mend and interest rates were still low.

The primary source of materials in the case was an interview with the owner (pseudo name: Abdul Khan). The owner wishes to remain anonymous. The financial statements of the firm produced in the case have been modified by a fixed factor so as to disguise the actual numbers but not materially alter the information in any fashion. Other secondary sources of materials include information about the business incubator program, the MBE certification and its benefits through the State of Florida, real estate and lease rates in Central Florida and other economic information.

This case is primarily intended for undergraduate students taking a course in entrepreneurship, real estate investments or financial management, with emphasis on real estate valuation, cash flow forecasting and/or valuation of business. Students should be familiar with time value of money concepts, understand the concept of NPV and IRR, and preferably be comfortable in the use of Excel. This instructor manual provides all calculations of space needs analysis, and discounted cash flow analysis for lease vs buy analysis. A few suggestions to discuss qualitative aspects of this decision making are also included.