Articles

Common Impact Featured in CommonWealth Magazine

Title: (Non)billable hours: Two start-ups try to make management consulting affordable for nonprofit organizations
Source:CommonWealth Magazine, Fall 2006
Author: Gabrielle Gurley
Website: http://www.massinc.org/commonwealth/

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Most nonprofit organizations run lean, if not mean, operations, with only the largest able to afford luxuries like contracting out a new database design to private management consultants. But even in the nonprofit world, performance matters more than ever, and engaging expert consultants is no longer a frill, but a necessity. What’s a shoestring operation to do?

Two young Boston area social entrepreneurs think they’ve found the answers, one in universities and business schools, the other in private companies that have talent to spare. At New Sector Alliance, Carly Janson recruits college and MBA students to work under expert mentors on projects for nonprofits, while Common Impact’s Theresa Ellis enlists corporate employees to serve as pro bono consultants in their areas of professional expertise.

Both Common Impact and New Sector Alliance “harness the energy of volunteer labor, whether those are students, corporate volunteers, or management consulting volunteers, that the average nonprofit would not have access to otherwise,” says Kristen McCormack, director of Boston University’s School of Management Public and Nonprofit Management Program. With the boundaries between the for-profit and the nonprofit worlds increasingly blurred, she says, these social enterprises pursue a “double-bottom line” of fulfilling a social mission and generating income to support their mission by selling products or services.

The two organizations strive to satisfy the nonprofit sector’s yen for problem-solvers with 21st century skill sets at a fraction of the cost. But can either of them, in bringing these coveted, but typically costly, services to their clients, also sustain themselves? 

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