05.1Purpose & Sustainability
Non-profit & governance
Board strategy, fundraising structure, and the non-profit governance work that keeps a mission-driven organization defensible to its funders and board.
The engagement
How we help
Non-profit and governance consulting is board strategy, fundraising, and program design: helping mission-driven organizations govern well, fund themselves sustainably, and run programs that actually serve their purpose. These are loyal buyers, because the work touches the core of how an organization delivers on its mission.
We work on the decisions that keep a non-profit both effective and defensible: how the board governs, where sustainable funding comes from, and how programs are designed to deliver real impact. The engagement produces a clearer governance and funding strategy and stronger program design: practical structures a board and staff can run, grounded in the organization's actual mission and constraints.
Our founder's internship in the chambers of a U.S. District Court judge in Boston involved more than 100 pages of financial and strategic analysis across 36 federal matters, real exposure to the kind of institutional accountability a non-profit board is also answerable to, in a very different setting but under the same standard of scrutiny.
- Practice
- Purpose & Sustainability practice
- Typical buyer
- Boards, EDs & funders
- Reach
- Worldwide
Deliverables
What you receive
Non-profit work delivers when strategy respects both mission and reality. The deliverables are structures a board and staff can actually run.
How the board governs today and where it's helping or hindering the mission:
assessed candidly against good-practice, not just compliance.
How the board should be composed, structured, and run to govern well:
practical for a real board, not an idealized one.
- 03
A funding strategy
Where sustainable funding should come from and how to diversify it, so the mission isn't hostage to a single source.
- 04
Program design
How programs should be structured to deliver real impact against the mission, with the measures to show it.
- 05
An implementation plan
How the changes roll out across board and staff, owned internally, so they hold after the engagement.
How we work
How the engagement runs
- 01
Assess
We read governance, funding, and programs against the mission, candidly, so the work addresses what's actually limiting impact.
- 02
Strategize
We shape board, funding, and program strategy that's practical for a real organization with real constraints, not an idealized one.
- 03
Strengthen
We plan the rollout across board and staff so the changes are owned internally and outlast the engagement.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
- Do you do fundraising for us?
- We set the funding strategy (where sustainable support should come from and how to diversify it), and can guide your team executing it. The value we own is the strategy, not soliciting on your behalf.
- Is this only for large non-profits?
- No. Governance, funding sustainability, and program design matter at every size, and smaller organizations often have the most to gain from getting the structures right early.
- How is a non-profit and governance engagement scoped?
- Around the decision, not a package. We agree what has to be answered, what evidence that takes, and how long it should run: then quote that. A first call is a scoping call, with no obligation and no packaged pitch, and the quote is free.
Related services
More services in Purpose & Sustainability
Further reading
Related reading from the Journal
Facing a governance or funding question?
Tell us where governance, funding, or programs feel fragile. A first conversation is a scoping conversation: no obligation.
No obligation · a scoping conversation first