This piece is part of Learning from Nonprofit Leaders, a series of stories that share insights from 25 years of work with mission-driven organizations. Client names and identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality and the story has been fictionalized but the leadership examples provided in each story are real.
One afternoon I had a meeting with John Sunderland. He was the Executive Director of Pivot Academy, an organization that had turned an unused warehouse into four basketball courts in the northern part of this large, mid-Atlantic city. The organization hosted after-school basketball and provided homework help in classroom spaces adjoining the courts, serving kids from low-income families in the region.
“We’re looking to grow,” said John with a sparkle in his eye, “and we need a firm to help us with that strategy. We now serve around 600 youth each year, but that’s only two percent of the kids age seven to nineteen in our area. We need to do more.” John went on to explain how the quality of education in the northern part of the city was abysmal. It was unconscionable that kids here were so poorly served. He talked in excited and deliberate terms about opening a charter school in the next few years.
A few days later, I met with Beth Williams, a program officer at the William Holding Trust, one of the leading foundations in the city. She had on a pressed white blouse, a blue blazer, and tan slacks. I had met with her every few years to share insights with each other about our recent work and the nonprofit sector in general. The Trust’s giving priorities leaned strongly towards youth development and education in low-income neighborhoods and they had been a consistent funder of Pivot Academy. After our initial chit-chat we started discussing the challenges of supporting nonprofits seeking to grow. I mentioned John’s interest in growth and his vision of opening a charter school.
“I don’t believe John will be successful with a charter school,” said Beth in a definitive way. She made a note on the pad in front of her. “Charter schools are very challenging to get right.” She looked at me directly. “A lot of people want to start them, but very few have the capacity to do it well. And John? Well, we won’t be providing funding for their charter school effort.”
I mentioned this to John when I spoke to him a week later, and he shrugged. “She’s entitled to her opinion,” he said.
But I worried about the charter school and how it would turn out. John had been a prime force behind the growth of Pivot Academy from a volunteer program with several dozen kids to what it was today. I knew John wasn’t afraid to face a challenge. When coaching kids in the program, he would speak about how basketball was a game of challenge, how losing was just as important as winning, maybe more important, and failure was part of striving to be better. He would inspire the kids to reach higher, to believe in themselves.
Yet Beth was right about charter schools. Based on national data from the Network for Public Education, within five years of launching, one quarter of charter schools would fail, and half were closing within fifteen years. This was eight times the closure rate of public schools. John was taking on a bigger challenge than Pivot Academy had faced ever before, and I wasn’t sure he could do it. The consequences of school failure could be dire, not only for the children and families in the school, but for the rest of Pivot Academy’s programs as well.
Even so, I liked John, I believed in the program, and I wanted to be helpful, so we submitted a proposal for strategic planning. After receiving our proposal, John hired us for the work.
Our Wellspring Consulting team for the project included Arshad Merchant, who, like me, had worked at the Boston Consulting Group earlier in his career. Our other team member was Alicia Johnson. She had joined us from the Yale School of Management with superlative recommendations from several of her professors.
As Arshad, Alicia, and I got going on the project, we reviewed Pivot Academy’s programmatic and financial performance, finding it to be solid and growing. We interviewed over sixty people, including staff members, board members, funders, and people deeply knowledgeable about the education system in the city. The clear commitment to education and doing right by kids inspired us. We gathered data on trends in youth development and education, and we learned about organizations in the city that did similar work, helping us to get a better read on attractive future options for Pivot Academy. We brought these findings to monthly meetings with a strategic planning team that comprised John, his staff leaders, and several board members.
Everything we heard indicated that Pivot Academy was an excellent organization.
“I’ve been impressed by how talented and innovative the staff are,” said one interviewee.
“They have a positive, development-oriented culture,” said another. “They exude respect for everyone and seem to get a lot done while having fun doing it.”
We also assessed the rate of gentrification in the northern part of the city to see if demand for Pivot Academy’s programs would be changing. We learned that while some parts of the region were gentrifying, the areas closer to Pivot Academy’s location had a high density of city-funded housing structures that would provide homes for low-income populations for years to come.
Drawing on all the data we were collecting, we worked with John and the strategic planning team to develop strategic goals that would support growth. These goals included codifying the programs so they could be more easily replicated; incorporating performance evaluation into all of the organization’s programs so they could be more easily assessed and continuously improved; being more deliberate in using numerical measures of performance to inform management decisions; and investing more time engaging with parents and community members to make sure the program stayed in tune with community needs.
Building from these goals, together we defined initiatives whereby Pivot Academy would achieve the goals over the coming five years. And we set targets for numbers of students served, revenues raised, and budgets expended. But the biggest goal, with its associated initiatives, was the plan to launch a charter school.
When we brought these goals, initiatives, and targets to Pivot Academy’s full board for approval, all the board members agreed to move ahead with implementation. John had done a good job pre-selling them in the weeks leading to the meeting. Yet the board remained concerned about the challenges of opening a charter school.
John appeared unfazed, and as we finished our strategic planning project, John turned his energy to launching the charter school. I kept in touch from time to time and heard how the work on the school was unfolding. John engaged with his board members and development staff to raise money from over five-hundred individuals and institutions. He borrowed money from more than a dozen lenders. He worked with seven different city agencies to develop the plan for the charter school and get their support. And, remarkably, he secured $33 million from the school district operations division to support the effort.
It all looked like the school would happen. But then, quite precipitously, the city required John to build fifty low-income housing units in addition to the school. I figured that would be the end of it. But, undaunted, John took on the new challenge, too. He spent time with city officials. He had more meetings with donors. He developed relationships with architects, builders, and financiers. Not only was John running a rapidly growing youth development program and planning for a new school, but he was also becoming a real estate developer, a construction manager, and a financing expert.
Three years after our project with John, I met him in his office at the new school. It was the first new public school building to be built in the city in seven decades. The halls were wide and there was a lot of glass―like buildings I’d seen on college campuses. The smell of new vinyl and floor wax hung in the air, and the sounds of children came wafting down the hall. I felt inspired and excited as I walked up the wide stairs to the second floor of the school, and into John’s office.
I wondered how John had done it. I knew there had been long hours, and many, many meetings. He had mastered new skills and secured the needed money. He was clearly smart and dedicated. Yet there was something more. John had a deep regard for each person with whom he engaged. He offered his attention. He listened. He had thoughtful advice. I had seen how he established a vision, drawing his staff and board forward, giving them something to strive for and be a part of.
I thought back to all the meetings with him over the years, and how, after every interaction with him, I felt warm, cared about, and inspired. I imagined I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. So many people had been carried by John’s warmth, his powerful steadiness, his kindness.
“You’re an absolutely excellent consulting firm to work with,” said John, turning his thoughtful regard toward me as we wrapped up our meeting. “I love your strategic thinking, and how you keep your work focused on the core issues. Over the years, we’ve gotten a lot of value from you.”
And as I left the meeting with John, a leader I admired and wanted to emulate, I realized how much value I had received from him, too.
Twenty years later, Pivot Academy has grown and now operates multiple schools throughout the city. The organization has gained recognition in many ways, including a prestigious award from the city for its work embodying civic leadership and public service.
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.