Monday, November 21, 2011

The business of the business of good

Michael Porter, the Harvard business school guru, defined how industries work in his book on competitive strategy. He drew out the relationships between competitive enterprises and their supply chains, infrastructure, distribution channels, and advocacy organizations. He noted how industries develop secondary support firms - such as specialized consulting services geared toward the needs of the enterprises in that industry.

By this standard, philanthropy and nonprofits have solidly achieved the industrial state. Three recent pieces on the consulting businesses that serve philanthropy and nonprofits caught my attention. The Chronicle of Philanthropy ran this piece, noting some of the bigger name firms. It also noted that the services these organizations provide used to be offered up pro bono. Now they are lines of business or entire firms unto themselves.

Blue Avocado, an online newsletter targeting nonprofit professionals, recently ran this piece on the "philanthropic industrial consulting complex." The title gives you a sense of the piece's position on the growth in consulting firms serving nonprofits and foundations. One insight worth considering is the degree to which young professionals may be more attracted to the consulting firms than to the nonprofits themselves. If true, this detracts talent from the sector and devalues the role of direct experience over academic degrees. The article offers no data to back the claim, but it is an intriguing concern. The third piece was a Washington Post story on the use of funds at the Newark Public Schools foundation funded by Mark Zuckerberg and others. At the time, the Newark Star Ledger was reporting that 1/3 of the funds from the Foundation for Newark's Future had gone to consultants linked to the Mayor's office.

As the founder of a consulting firm that served foundations, and now a managing director at another such firm, I've lived through the decade and a half of consulting firm growth. I founded my firm in 1997 in my living room. Within a few years we were competing with the spin offs from the big consulting firms or consulting firms with ties to major universities. To the degree that these firms add rigor, analytic capacity, talent, and research to the world of social good they are probably a net positive. Those that run as commercial firms inhabit the social enterprise space - serving the social sector without tax subsidy and paying for it with earned revenue. Those that run as nonprofits work hard to justify that tax exemption by sharing otherwise proprietary insights with the broader sector. However, to the degree that competition between these firms results in the service sector equivalent of planned obsolescence, or the kind of tail fin embellishment of 1950s auto makers, we might take a second look at our utility.

The consulting world has considered professional credentials, social impact advisors' networks, professional alliances, and so on. These efforts are nascent and no better or worse than any other industry's unforced efforts at self-regulation. As consultants to the social sector, I believe it behooves us to take seriously the potential and limitations of our aggregated selves.

3 comments:

Mazarine said...

Dear Lucy,

I am a nonprofit consultant and teacher and I think that we do have to make sure that we are as effective as we can be for nonprofits. And nonprofits need to try to be effective more than they have been (as evidenced by GiveWell.com's only recommending 2% of the nonprofits that have been submitted for evaluation).

Frequently, I talk with people who are currently employed as development staff at nonprofits, a sense of the enormity of their tasks pervades their speech, they seem depressed, demotivated, and even angry. They KNOW that they should get paid more. They KNOW that even if they raise tons of money, it won't trickle down to them. They KNOW that the board or ED can take credit for their work and fire them for no reason.They can be charged with raising money for new programs on top of their other duties, without any say in the addition of said new programs.

Is it any wonder that the average tenure of a nonprofit professional at a nonprofit is merely 18 months?

People would not flee to consulting gigs if nonprofits were paying better than the minimum needed to survive. People would not flee to the private sector if they were getting appreciated at their current nonprofit positions.

Thanks for allowing me to comment.

Peace,

Mazarine
PS. I teach a free webinar about how to move up in your nonprofit career if you're interested. http://charityhowto.com/upcoming.php

Charles Cameron (hipbone) said...

Hi Lucy:

Excellent timing! As you know and have kindly tweeted, we're currently hosting an event at SocialEdge on Philanthropic Advisers. It would be great if we could get some cross-discussion going between our respective comments sections -- both to generate a wider public conversation, and to begin to network our respective networks...

Many thanks,

Charles

Anonymous said...

Excellent post, and as thoughtful as always. I wonder if the marriage counseling business is also booming. Amateurism does not suit our earnest generation. Philanthropy may be done for love, but love too requires at least a Dear Abby.

Phil Cubeta