1. We Couldn't Do That

This piece is the first post in Learning from Nonprofit Leaders, a series of stories sharing insights gained from 25 years of work with mission-driven organizations. Client names and identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality, but the leadership examples provided in each story are real.

“Yes,” she said, “we’d love to do the project with you.”

I caught my breath. Really? Was it true?

Sarah Hollister, Executive Director of The West River Foundation for Children, was speaking with me in her office. We were sitting at a small, round wooden table next to her desk. She was leaning forward towards me with an earnest, no-nonsense expression. The third-floor ceiling slanted over our heads as we sat under the eaves in one of the old Victorian homes in New Haven that had been converted into offices for nonprofit organizations.

The West River Foundation, or West River as everyone called it, taught grade-school teachers on how to foster classrooms where students from different backgrounds felt respected, included, and able to learn. The organization offered a series of instructional practices coupled with classroom climate assessments, teacher coaching, and community-building exercises. The goal was not only to train teachers, but to help the teachers inculcate skills and awareness in their students that would have a lasting, perhaps even life-long effect.

As I sat there with Sarah I marveled at her dedication to this mission, particularly in this small nonprofit with her compact desk, small bookcases, and the paint peeling from a water spot on the ceiling. It was so different from the lavish offices in the corporate world I had come from.

Some months earlier I had left my job as a partner at the Boston Consulting Group, or “BCG” as we called it, a strategy-consulting firm serving large corporations.

Since leaving BCG, I had been trying to launch a strategy consulting firm serving nonprofit organizations. But after meeting with nearly one hundred people—past colleagues, business school classmates, anyone who would listen—I started to worry. Would I find a client? Would the idea work?

I had called Sarah on the suggestion of Laura Whitaker, co-founder of Speakers for America, an organization that trained business leaders in speaking and public presentation skills. Laura was a performing artist with a theater background. I had been touched by Laura’s bright enthusiasm and open-hearted approach during a training she offered for BCG partners. She was an unexpected breath of fresh air in my world driven by deadlines and a need to be smart all of the time.

Later, I had called to tell her I was leaving BCG and to describe the idea I had of consulting to nonprofits. “We do a lot of work with nonprofits,” she had said. “They’re lovely to work with.” She suggested I call her friend Sarah Hollister. “You’ll enjoy her,” said Laura, “and I think they may need some help from you.” There was a wink in her voice.

On the phone, Sarah confirmed that she was looking to launch a strategic plan. I took careful notes—nervous about capturing all her thoughts—and sent her a proposal a week later. Soon after, I was sitting in her office. That was when she said she’d like to work with us. After so many months of seeking and hoping, I felt a huge wave of excitement and relief.

Sarah then asked, “Can you get started before the end of the month?”

“Absolutely,” I said, trying to sound calm and professional.

Nancy Darnell, Director of Programs, was also there with us at the table. She had close-cropped dark hair, and her eyes reflected both kindness and astute determination. She looked at me directly and asked, “Who will be working with you on the project?”

“Caroline Grant, one of our consultants,” I said, trying to sound like we were an ongoing business. Caroline had agreed to join me on this project if I sold it, but we hadn’t worked together before. She had approached me through her husband, whom I knew from BCG. I had met Caroline over coffee a week ago and had been impressed by her earnestness and professionalism.

Monitor Deloitte had given Caroline a job offer earlier in the year, but the firm rescinded her offer because of the recent downturn in the economy. One more casualty of the bottom-line business world. Caroline had sounded a bit shaky when she had called to ask for a job.

In mentioning Caroline as my teammate, my mind flashed back to the lunch date I had several weeks prior with the CEO from the Community Foundation in Hartford. We were seated at a sidewalk table outside LuAnn’s Bakery & Cafe on Trumbull Street. We each had tea. A small vase of flower buds sat on the table, and the scent of fresh muffins was coming out the door. The CEO was listening to me talk about Wellspring Consulting, the firm I was launching. I was explaining how I had chosen the name after testing many options with friends in the nonprofit sector.

“We will provide strategy consulting to nonprofit organizations,” I said.

“Who is this ‘we?’” asked the CEO, raising her eyebrows with a skeptical tone.

“Right now,” I said, feeling flushed, “it’s just me. I’m building a firm.”

The previous summer, I had been sitting in a conference room at BCG on the 34th floor at Exchange Place in downtown Boston. Gathered around a gorgeous dark-wood oval table, we had a full view of Boston Harbor. Sailboats, ferries, and container ships traced paths across the water, while airplanes glided in and powered out of Logan Airport across the bay. A faint scent of wood polish and fine furniture was in the air. The rooms and corridors were hung with expensive art.

I had worked at BCG for twelve years, helping national and multi-national corporations grow, become more profitable, and increase shareholder value. At the inception of my time there, I sat with a group of fellow interns at the Chatham Bars Inn—billed on the website as “Cape Cod’s Finest Luxury Hotel”—for a weekend retreat, wondering what to do with all the forks and spoons in my table setting. Over the ensuing years, I flew first class to points across the United States and around the world, feeling a disturbing mix of privilege and unease as others walked past to the coach-class seats behind.

Some of our work at BCG focused on reducing costs. We guided a paper manufacturer to close down under-performing paper plants; we tried unsuccessfully to help a regional hardware-store chain stay open under the competitive onslaught of Home Depot; and we cut the workforce of a manufacturing company in Worcester, MA, after a European company had purchased it.

At other times we focused more broadly on increasing profits. We worked to shorten the time to market for skimpy lingerie manufactured in China. We redesigned business processes for a global alcoholic-beverage manufacturer.

Over time, I started to realize that the highest-margin businesses often tended to be those selling a product with some kind of addictive or hyper-attractive quality. And the business decisions we contributed to were influencing hundreds, maybe thousands of people’s livelihoods in ways that we couldn’t know or see. While the people at BCG were incredibly talented, I was often uneasy about the ultimate goals of our work.

On that previous summer morning, sitting in the conference room above the Boston harbor, we were discussing opportunities for the global expansion of a metals mining and manufacturing company. Three of the manufacturing company’s top executives were there, with five members of our BCG team.

“There’s a site in Guizhou, in southwest China, that we could purchase,” said the head of the company’s business development group, sitting across the table, impeccably dressed in a suit and tie. He was leaning back comfortably in one of the board-room style leather chairs that ringed the table.

“What’s the situation there?” asked the senior BCG partner who headed our team. He had horn-rimmed spectacles and would hold your gaze steady as he was thinking through a problem.

“They’ve got 7,000 people working in an open pit mine,” said the head of business development, waving his hand in the air as if to show a wide expanse. “The ore is good, but their extraction methods are primitive. We could increase the output quality of the metal to world-class standards, and likely cut the unit cost to one quarter.”

“What’s the labor situation?” asked the senior partner as he removed his glasses, wiped them with a cloth, then replaced them on his nose.

“I expect we could run the new plant with 700 people.”

“Will the reduction in force be straightforward?” said the senior partner, wondering what resistance we might meet.

“There should be no problem,” said the head of business development with a quick wave of his hand. “The government is happy with the bundle of money we’ll be bringing in.”

The senior partner then said, with an easy smile, that we would be glad to assess the opportunity. We would analyze the supply chain, size the global markets that could be served from there, and project the return on investment.

“Great!” said the head of business development with a nod. “Send me a proposal, and we can work out the details.”

As the conversation unfolded, something fundamental shifted inside of me. Enough! Enough single-minded focus on profits. Enough turning a blind eye to the human cost of economic progress. Working amidst large corporations, I had been sorely missing a sense of commitment to the whole of humanity, the weak as well as the strong. That feeling had become acute. I would leave BCG shortly thereafter and travel the path that led to my meeting with Sarah Hollister at West River.

As we set up our strategic planning project with West River, Sarah and Nancy had asked us to figure out if there was a financially feasible way to serve individual teachers who contacted them from all over the country, asking for training and support. West River was getting an increasing number of individual requests from distant locations, and they weren’t sure how to respond.

We started by interviewing their staff and board members—all past teachers and people deeply committed to education. We spoke with leaders of six other organizations who provided excellent professional development to teachers, learning about their program structure and pricing. We asked probing questions of five experts in primary education policy and programming. We talked with teachers and school administrators who had used West River’s approach. And tying it all together, we built a financial model to test the economics of serving individual teachers versus groups of teachers at a school, or groups of schools in the same region.

Through all this data gathering and analysis, we determined that serving individual teachers within a ninety-minute drive of West River’s offices made the most sense economically, both for West River and the teachers. This was no surprise, and it was the approach the organization had been taking since its inception. However, what could they do with the training requests coming from teachers all over the country? When we ran the economics, we confirmed that it would be financially unsustainable if West River staff were to travel to train each of these teachers individually.

There was also another factor to consider. We learned through our interviews that if only one teacher in one classroom in a school instituted West River’s approach, the benefits for the children quickly faded away in the following years as they moved on to other teachers and other grades. However, if children were exposed to West River’s approach over multiple years in multiple settings—in classrooms, on the playground, in the lunchroom—it had lasting positive effects.

Additionally, our economic model showed that if groups of teachers in a school or school district could be trained together in the same geographic area, the training was, on average, forty percent less costly per teacher than it was for training individual teachers in different schools at different locations around the country.

It became clear that the best approach for training teachers at a distance would be to ask teachers to connect West River with their school administrators, who could arrange for West River staff to travel to train all of the teachers in the school. It was a new model for West River, a “whole school” approach to training. The economics worked, and it would provide lasting benefit to the children in the school.

Caroline and I, coming from the business world, also saw that this could be an economic windfall for West River. “Not only will this whole-school approach improve your outcomes,” said Caroline during our monthly meeting at West River with Sarah and Nancy, “but also, given your current prices, you will be able to increase your financial returns substantially. And if you also increase your prices by fifteen percent, which, based on our research, we have reason to believe the market will bear, this model could drive a fifty-percent increase to the bottom line.”

“Oh no,” said Nancy with alarm, “We couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, the whole-school model for training sounds like a great idea for the reasons you’ve enumerated,” replied Nancy. “But the schools are under enough hardship as it is. They never have enough funds. We should pass along savings to the schools whenever we can. That’s what we’re all about.”

And at that moment, I felt a root-level reconfiguration. During my MBA training and my years at BCG, I had been in environments where economic gain for our clients was the ubiquitous and unquestioned goal. I had unconsciously taken up that goal. Here was a whole different way. The profit-seeking drive that had surrounded me in the corporate world lifted, like a fog after the morning sun comes out, and I felt an open-hearted realization. Back in the BCG meeting with the metals mining and manufacturing company, Nancy’s selfless orientation was what I had been missing.

This series, Learning from Nonprofit Leaders, grows out of our work at Wellspring Consulting, a national management consulting firm serving nonprofit organizations. If you’d like to receive future stories in this series, you can subscribe here on Substack. It would also be lovely to hear your own reflections and experiences in the comments.