Around this time every year, Harvard Business School alum Bill Berry starts pondering all of the secrets behind Benihana of Tokyo's famous recipe - not the food, but the company.

In the killjoy world of academia, where fun stuff like Japanese steakhouses has a way of morphing into the decidedly un-fun, the case study of Benihana (1972) reigns as among the most important case studies ever produced at Harvard B-School, inventor of the genre some 80 years ago.

"People start out thinking they are analyzing a restaurant, but then realize that it's not just a restaurant, but a well-oiled machine," says Berry, class of '75, a professor of business at Queens University of Charlotte. "It's like Disney World, or a cruise ship where it's all about processing people."

Of course, during these times of chronic corporate bungling and bad behavior (see British Petroleum, Goldman Sachs, etc.), some look to religion for answers.

Others, well, turn to Harvard.

And in Charlotte, it's hard not to be impressed by how the Harvard B-school brand is now synonymous with commerce and charity.

In what seems to me a remarkable blend of capitalism and do-goodership, Berry volunteers twice a year with a couple dozen members of the Harvard Business School alums in Charlotte to teach a range of such business case studies (i.e., Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble; L'Oreal and the Globalization of American Beauty; Enron) to local executives, small business owners and leaders of struggling nonprofits.

The going rate of a 13-week, quasi-Hah-vaad education: a modest $1,800.

"It's the best bang for your buck you're going to get in education," says recent graduate Bob Utsman, 71, a retired senior manager of Exxon Chemical who now is board president of the nonprofit Cooperative Christian Ministry. "These days, our funders are demanding greater results, so it's necessary for nonprofits to run like a for-profit business."

Over the program's seven years, about 50 local companies have sent executives through the program, from Bank of America to Duke Energy to TIAA-CREF. Since then, the Harvard Business School Club has donated - after absorbing the cost of books, food and administration - about $165,000 to such local charities, or about 80 percent of its tuition revenue.

To be sure, there is an irony to a curriculum that often uses cases of dumb corporate decisions that hurt ordinary Americans to fund charities that helps them. Last semester, for example, a guy who ran a subprime mortgage firm (now defunct) lectured on the dangers of subprime lending, and that was followed by another alum offering policy prescriptions for the mortgage meltdown.

Still, it's no secret that Charlotte's nonprofits are struggling through some tough times, due to a bum economy and some United Way chicanery. The willingness of Harvard B-school alums to leverage their coveted expertise for charity is among the myriad - and often beneath-the-radar - ways in which the Charlotte community is filling a critical gap.

Says Berry: "It's amazing: An hour and a half apiece from our volunteers translates into thousands of dollars. It's like loaves and fishes or something."