Bridgespan’s consulting engagements focus on results. We seek opportunities to help high-performing and high-potential organizations maximize the impact of their work. Most of our clients are pragmatic idealists – people with big ideas who seek to build roadmaps for pursuing them.
Our clients come from many parts of the sector (e.g., youth development, education, environment, community development) and face many types of strategic issues. None of our clients has been so small that basic operating issues overwhelm their ability to make strategic choices, nor so large that they have the capacity to engage for-profit consulting firms. We avoid working in fields that are already well-served by consultants, can pay for-profit rates, or both – such as major health care and higher education institutions.
We work with both nonprofits and foundations. Our nonprofit engagements cluster around important strategic problems and issues of implementation that are relevant across the sector, including challenges of growth, strategic focus, economic sustainability, and performance measurement.
Our consulting with foundations centers on clarifying areas of focus and defining grant-making approaches for impact (e.g., degree of engagement with nonprofits, size of grants, capabilities required). We also partner with some foundations to work with their grantees on developing business plans for programs and initiatives in which they invest.
Every engagement is highly customized, focusing on the unique challenges and opportunities of each client we serve. 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.
Because these challenges are complex, and we are committed to working with clients through implementation, the typical engagement involves three to four Bridgespan consultants and lasts five to six months.
In all engagements, the measure of success is whether the organization is positioned to increase substantially the impact of its work and has an implementation plan for doing it.
In establishing consulting relationships, we consider the following criteria:
- Social impact: How significant is the issue for society and what is the organization’s potential to influence significant outcomes through its work?
- Knowledge generation: Will the engagement lead to the production of knowledge that might be relevant to other leaders in the nonprofit sector?
- Capacity to act: Is the organization positioned to implement the plans that emerge from our work together?
- Bridgespan’s capability: Are the challenges and opportunities facing the organization well-aligned with Bridgespan’s capabilities?
In the end, the key measure of our mutual success is whether the collaboration will enable the organization to more powerfully pursue its mission and whether it is building the internal capability to address new challenges and opportunities as they arise.
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