Philanthropy Advising
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Bridgespan’s engagements with philanthropy focus on results. We cultivate relationships with individuals and foundations with big ideas for making the world a better place, who seek roadmaps for enabling and accelerating social change. We seek opportunities to help them maximize the impact of their resources.
PRACTICE
Our work in philanthropy typically addresses four broad sets of strategic challenges: clarifying the objectives of the philanthropic effort; developing strategies to pursue it; aligning financial and organizational resources to implement it; and defining sound performance measures to assess impact. We also partner with some philanthropies to work with their grantees on developing business plans for programs and initiatives in which they invest, and to help grantees build their leadership teams through our Executive Search capability. For organizations and individuals contemplating significant, focused investment in a domain or organization, we provide strategic advice and related due diligence.
Every engagement is highly customized, focusing on the unique challenges and opportunities of the philanthropy. Our work centers around framing the key questions, bringing data and analysis to bear on those questions, facilitating values-based discussion about important strategic and organizational choices, and laying out an implementation plan that encompasses the economic and organizational implications of the plan.
ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIPS
In any relationship, the measure of success is whether the client is positioned to increase substantially the impact of its work and has an implementation plan for doing it. In establishing our philanthropy advising relationships, we consider the following criteria:
• Social impact: What is the potential to influence significant outcomes through this work? Is the philanthropy prepared to invest sufficient resources to achieve the desired objective?
• Knowledge generation: Will the engagement lead to learning and insights that might be relevant to the philanthropy community and grantees? Will it inspire others to act?
• Capacity to act: Is the philanthropy open to significant change if that’s what’s required for greater impact—and well positioned to implement the plans that emerge from our work together?
• Bridgespan’s capability: Are the challenges and opportunities well-aligned with Bridgespan’s capabilities? |