Alumni Consulting Team (ACT)

Location: Walnut Creek
Skills: Strategic Planning
Issue: What is the future role of the Walnut Creek Library Foundation and how does it transition to this new vision?
www.wclibrary.org

Organization
The Walnut Creek Library Foundation raises private funds to support Walnut Creek's two public libraries with new facilities, larger collections, new and more available technology and enhanced programs and services. Founded in 1998 by a group of community leaders including representatives from city government and Friends of the Library, the Foundation currently has 22 board members, a full-time executive director and a part-time administrative assistant.

Situation
The library foundation is raising the final $1 million of a $5 million capital campaign to assist with the construction of a new downtown library to replace the existing library that was built in 1961 when Walnut Creek was a city of fewer than 10,000 residents. Once the capital campaign is completed and the new library opens, the Foundation will face the opportunity and the challenge to reshape its role and its contribution to the community.

Project
The Walnut Creek Library Foundation would like an ACT team to help it consider how it can most effective in the future. Among the questions it hopes to answer are:

• How can the Foundation use the momentum from the capital campaign to become a successful, enduring organization?
• What should be the Foundation's role in supporting the ongoing operating costs of Walnut Creek's libraries?
• What kind of board will be supporting the future vision of the Library Foundation?

Location: Berkeley
Issue: How can BORP develop a more effective brand?
Skills: Marketing and communications
www.borp.org

Organization
Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program (BORP) brings sports and recreation opportunities to children and adults with physical disabilities. Founded in 1976, BORP offers individual and team sports including wheelchair basketball, soccer, rugby, cycling and recreation activities, and museum and theater trips. BORP has also developed programs to reach out to low income and minority populations, providing services like group transportation to enable them to participate in BORP's programs.

Situation
While BORP is clear on its mission, it needs to update its message and name. BORP would like to develop a brand image that communicates the positive impact it has on the people it serves. For example, 98% of BORP's youth program alumni have graduated from high school (vs. a 70% graduation rate nationally), and more than 70% are employed versus a 30% employment rate for people with disabilities nationally.

Project
BORP is one of 7 organizations building the Ed Roberts Campus, a center for disability-related services scheduled to open in spring 2010. This new center, located at the Ashby BART station in Berkeley, will bring significant opportunities for local, regional and national exposure. BORP would like to work with ACT consultants to help it better articulate its image (including a new name) that communicates the difference BORP makes in the lives of the disabled children and adults it serves.

Location: Oakland
Skills: Strategic planning
Issue: How can we expand our program to create the greatest impact in the most cost-effective way?
www.superstarsliteracy.org

Organization
Super Stars Literacy works with underserved children in kindergarten through second grade to help them build their literacy skills and assure that they enter 3rd grade reading at grade level. SSL's program, currently in five schools in Oakland, provides daily after-school instruction that combines an individualized reading program with social and behavioral skills development. SSL staff coordinates with each child's teacher and engages their parents to support these efforts.

Situation
Founded in 2002 by the Junior League, the program became an independent nonprofit in 2008. This past school year SSL expanded from 2 to 6 school sites, serving 270 students. Evaluation results demonstrate that SSL's approach can significantly improve the literacy readiness and self-confidence of its students and strengthen their opportunity for further academic success. SSL knows that that there is a great need in underserved communities across the Bay Area for a program like this. What they don't yet know is how to best proceed in an intentional fashion to create the greatest impact in the most cost-effective manner.

Project
Super Stars Literacy has recently completed, with the assistance of Taproot, an in-depth SWOT analysis to understand how other nonprofits providing similar services approach key organizational issues such as growth successes and challenges, fundraising strategies, cost models, use of volunteer resources, and assessment/evaluation processes. The organization would like ACT consultants to work with its Strategic Planning Committee to guide the organization's strategic planning process.

Location: Oakland
Skills: Market analysis
Issue: What is the potential for expanding our business model to the small business market?
wagescooperatives.org
www.tippoint.org/

Organization
Women's Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES) trains and supports low-income women to build worker-owned green cleaning businesses in the Bay Area. The cooperative model allows women to pool their skills and strong work ethic to improve their working conditions and increase their earnings.

WAGES provides intensive support for each new co-op prior to start-up and during the first three years of business operations. It also provides management training and other types of assistance to help each co-op achieve scale and make the business self-sustaining.

Situation
In the San Francisco Bay Area, an estimated 37 % of Latina/o households are barely able to meet their basic needs. And many are poor even though they work – for low pay and often in hazardous conditions. Women, particularly women of color and immigrant women, typically earn lower pay and have fewer assets than men. Casual housecleaning & other domestic factory jobs are among the few opportunities open to low-income immigrant women, but these jobs pay very little, provide no benefits and can lead to health problems from over exposure to harsh chemicals.

WAGES has helped women to establish 4 worker-owned cleaning co-ops in the Bay Area. Through these co-ops, local women have increased family incomes between 50 to 70%, gained health benefits and built equity in their own business.

Project
WAGES is evaluating the potential to expand the cooperative's service offerings to new market segments. While its existing co-ops focus on the residential cleaning market, they currently serve some small business clients. WAGES would like to analyze the opportunity for co-ops to offer green cleaning services to this niche and other niches of the commercial cleaning (i.e. janitorial) market, in order to broaden the co-ops' base of potential customers in light of the economic downturn. WAGES is also interested in assessing the opportunity for co-ops to offer value added services to existing residential clients in order to increase income for the co-ops. They would like an ACT consultant or two to help them better understand the needs and current practices of this segment including pricing, competition, purchase decisions and market size.

WAGES is a grantee of Tipping Point Community, a nonprofit working to alleviate poverty in the Bay Area. Tipping Point carefully selects nonprofits that are most effective in helping the poor and builds long-term relationships, supporting these organizations with grants and management assistance to help them build and expand their impact. This fall, GSB alumni have an opportunity to provide strategic market analysis to Tipping Point and their grantees through this project and two Springboard Forward Fast Track projects.

Location: San Rafael
Skills: Start up business strategic and business planning
Issue: How can we develop self sustaining "green" social enterprises that provide improved employment outcomes for our clients?
www.buckelew.org

Organization
Buckelew Programs provides affordable housing, employment services, and counseling services to help people with mental illness to live, work, learn, and participate fully in their communities. Founded in 1970, Buckelew was Marin's first community-based 24-hour facility serving local residents with mental illness. It has grown from one six-bed group home to an agency providing a continuum of supported housing and services to people in Marin, Sonoma and Napa Counties with an annual budget of $10 million.

Situation
To help its clients secure and maintain employment, Buckelew wants to develop self sustaining social enterprise ventures that emphasize "green" jobs. Buckelew currently has established a small janitorial activity and a limited-service café, to provide client job training as well as an employment agency to provide transitional and permanent employment for its graduate clients.

Buckelew has received Green Business Program Certification for its café located on the Marin County Health and Wellness Campus. For more details about The Blue Skies Café, visit their website.

Buckelew now looks to expand this activity into a self sustaining, dynamic, social enterprise activity in Marin, Napa, and Sonoma that provides transitional and permanent employment to clients, and improved outcomes and impacts for them, combined with achieving a positive financial impact (100 percent of the proceeds go to help the mission) and environmental sustainability.

Project
Buckelew Programs is seeking help to develop long term strategies, business models, and programs for the establishment of sustainable, dynamic, free standing social enterprise activities in Marin, Napa, and Sonoma that will

• Provide transitional client employment that results in improved outcomes and impact
• Provide incremental funds to support the mission and
• Result in improved ability to raise funds from individual, corporate, foundation and government sources.

Location: Menlo Park
Skills: Business planning, operating strategy design, marketing, sales/pricing, technology/internet knowledge, fundraising
Issue: What is the best model for scaling our organization?

Organization
Art in Action fosters the educational development and creativity of children in K-8 schools through innovative visual arts programs and communities. Founded by the current executive director in 1982 when funding for arts education was disappearing from California schools, Art in Action provides a sequential curriculum in art appreciation and skills and trains teachers and docents to deliver the program. Additionally, it helps schools to build vibrant arts communities that value art, display student art in libraries and local businesses, and encourage arts experiences for children and families. Today nearly 100 schools in the Bay Area use Art in Action as their basic art education program.

Situation
Art in Action wants to expand to 400 schools over the next three years. It has embarked on a strategy to scale nationally by delivering its training and support online. While the online products and resources are in development, the nonprofit has not yet determined the best model for expanding its programs to schools beyond the Bay Area. They are also considering expanding their curriculum into new markets such as high school, home school and the individual adult customer.

So far, most of their sales have come to them. Typically, parents learn about the program and encourage their school principals and PTAs to buy the program for the school. To reach their goal of being in 400 schools, Art in Action will need to develop a sales strategy.

In the upcoming fiscal year, several of their foundation grants will reach their three-year limit. With the decrease in existing foundation support, they will need to expand their fundraising effort.

Project
Art in Action would like an ACT team to help it determine the best plan for growth and is open to new ideas while staying focused on its mission. It hopes the team will review other replication models and identify the elements that seem best suited for Art in Action. In addition to increasing the number of schools, Art in Action specifically wants to better understand how the internet can support its efforts to market its product and build community in new locations nationwide.

Location: Redwood City
Issue: How can we build the capacity of nonprofit organizations to succeed in a performance-based environment?
Skills: Financial analysis, general management, contract management
www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/portal/site/SMC

Organization
Stretching from the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco Bay, San Mateo County is home to more than 700,000 people living in 20 cities and a large unincorporated area. San Mateo County government provides vital safety-net services for all of the County's residents, operates an award-winning public hospital, San Mateo Medical Center, and provides job training and other opportunities for those in need. The County's more than 5,000 employees also provide public safety and healthcare services, operate 17 parks, conduct elections and perform many other key community services. While the County provides many services directly, it increasingly partners with community nonprofits to deliver health and human services to county residents, allocating county, state and/or federal funds to support the organization's work. For example, this spring San Mateo County distributed $500,000 in funding as part of an Economic Urgency Assistance Program approved by the County Board of Supervisors.

Situation
In today's economy the County is looking at ways to do more with less. With budget and personnel reductions, it is open to ideas for streamlining processes and reducing costs. At the same time, the County is in the process of moving its departments to a performance based management system that links department goals to outcomes recently determined by the greater community.

Project
The County of San Mateo would like an ACT team to help it identify opportunities for greater efficiency and potential cost savings in its process of managing contracts and relationships with community-based organizations (CBOs). ACT consultants will also help the County better understand what it might do to help strengthen and support its partner CBOs to assure their sustainability and to align them with the County's performance goals.

Location: Stanford
Skills: Strategic planning, organizational development, communications/marketing, volunteer/stakeholder management, financial management, university-based experience
Issue: Developing a strategic plan that builds a common understanding of the Center's work and impact among and for its different stakeholders.
haas.stanford.edu

Organization
The Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University connects academic study with community and public service to strengthen communities and develop effective public leaders. Established in 1984 as one of the first university-based public service centers in the country, the Haas Center offers a wide variety of courses and programs including community based research, service learning courses, undergraduate and graduate fellowships and service partnerships with local community organizations.

Situation
The Haas Center serves a number of different stakeholders including faculty, students, alumni and the local community. These stakeholders are also represented in the Center's three advisory boards (National, Faculty and Student boards). Currently the Haas Center is facing change both internally—the Center recently appointed a new executive director—and externally from reductions in the university budget. In 2010, the Haas Center will also celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Project
The Haas Center has requested an ACT team to help develop a strategic plan – and in the process engage a wide range of students, faculty, community partners, administrators, and other stakeholders to guide the Center's (and hopefully down the road the entire University's) approach to public service education. Among the key issues the Center would like the team to address: developing a shared understanding of a conceptual framework for desired outcomes of its programs, defining strategies to better understand the impact of its work, clarifying its relationships with community partners, and considering potential pathways to achieve greater financial sustainability.

Location: Stanford
Issue: How can we develop a realistic plan for our growth?
Skills: Strategic planning
http://kesem.stanford.edu/

Organization
Camp Kesem provides a safe, supportive and exciting overnight summer camp experience for children who have a parent who is currently in treatment for cancer, in remission from cancer, or has died from cancer. Campers have the unique opportunity to build friendships and gain strength from peers facing similar challenges. Held for one week each summer at YMCA Camp Loma Mar in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the camp, which is filled with a wide variety of traditional camp activities as well as specialized activities, is staffed by Stanford students who volunteer their time and raise funds so that all campers can attend for free.

Founded by Stanford students and a Hillel staff person, the camp opened in the summer of 2001 and has grown each year. This summer the camp welcomed 120 campers and 68 counselors.

Situation
Supported by the enormous energy and enthusiasm of Stanford student volunteers, the camp's current leaders are working on a number of ambitious goals including planning a 10th anniversary celebration, launching an endowment campaign, expanding the Stanford camp, working with the UC Davis and UC Berkeley camps to help promote and support one another, and developing a plan for regional growth to serve more campers.

Project
Camp Kesem's leaders would appreciate working with an ACT consultant to determine their priorities, set goals, and plan how to allocate their limited resources most effectively.

Location: Belmont
Skills: Business development and market analysis, financial analysis, training and development
Issue: How can we leverage technology to deliver coaching and training services? What other industry segments hold the most promise for partnerships?
www.springboardforward.org
www.tippoint.org

Organization
The working poor often feel stuck in "dead-end jobs" and entry-level positions, without the know-how or vision to explore opportunities for career advancement. Springboard Forward works with these entry-level employees to develop career plans while improving their performance on their current jobs. Through career development methodologies, including one-on-one executive coaches, Springboard provides workers with the career skills necessary for achieving sustainable employment. Springboard's model aims to transform an employee's current job into a "springboard" for achieving future personal and career goals.

Springboard's innovative approach has gained national recognition. The organization was named a "change maker" by Fast Company and its founder, a Stanford graduate, was selected as an Ashoka Fellow.

Situation
Springboard Forward provides intensive career exploration and development and on-the-job career coaching. Springboard also trains employers how to support the career progressions of its clients. To date most of its coaching services have been delivered via face-to-face meetings. Springboard is exploring the potential to leverage technology – including the internet and cell phones – to deliver its services. The nonprofit is also exploring how it can expand its services to other segments (of business and education) that offer the potential to develop low-wage workers into engaged employees.

Project
Springboard Forward would like an ACT consultant or two to help assess how it might use technology (both software and technology platforms) to deliver some of its services remotely. It is interested in understanding the financial implications of using technology and the impact on program design. Springboard has identified a range of potential options and would like a consultant to perform a more in-depth assessment of these options and provide recommendations to pursue.

Springboard Forward is a grantee of Tipping Point Community, a nonprofit working to alleviate poverty in the Bay Area. Tipping Point carefully selects nonprofits that are most effective in helping the poor and builds long-term relationships, supporting these organizations with grants and management assistance to help them build and expand their impact. This fall, GSB alumni have an opportunity to provide strategic market analysis to Tipping Point and their grantees through this, another Springboard Forward, and Women's Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES) Fast Track projects.

Location: Belmont
Skills: Business development and market analysis
Issue: What other industry segments hold the most promise for partnerships?
www.springboardforward.org
www.tippoint.org

Organization
The working poor often feel stuck in "dead-end jobs" and entry-level positions, without the know-how or vision to explore opportunities for career advancement. Springboard Forward works with these entry-level employees to develop career plans while improving their performance on their current jobs. Through career development methodologies, including one-on-one executive coaches, Springboard provides workers with the career skills necessary for achieving sustainable employment. Springboard's model aims to transform an employee's current job into a "springboard" for achieving future personal and career goals.

Springboard's innovative approach has gained national recognition. The organization was named a "change maker" by Fast Company and its founder, a Stanford graduate, was selected as an Ashoka Fellow.

Situation
Springboard Forward provides intensive career exploration and development and on-the-job career coaching. It also trains employers how to support the career progressions of its clients. Springboard now wants to explore how it can expand its services to other business and education segments that offer the potential to develop low-wage workers into engaged employees.

Project
Initially, Springboard targeted the retail, hospitality and health care industries as partners and has worked with employees of El Camino Hospital and Bon Appétit (food service provider) as well as Bay Area Ross and Home Depot stores. As Springboard Forward expands its business development effort, it would like an ACT consultant or two to help it answer questions like: What other businesses are best positioned to benefit from the Springboard model? Which segments offer the best potential for new partnerships?

Springboard Forward is a grantee of Tipping Point Community, a nonprofit working to alleviate poverty in the Bay Area. Tipping Point carefully selects nonprofits that are most effective in helping the poor and builds long-term relationships, supporting these organizations with grants and management assistance to help them build and expand their impact. This fall, GSB alumni have an opportunity to provide strategic market analysis to Tipping Point and their grantees through this, another Springboard Forward, and Women's Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES) Fast Track projects.

Location: San Mateo
Issue: How can we build traffic to our new website?
Skills: Web marketing
www.sustainablesanmateo.org and www.sustainabilityhub.net

Organization
Sustainable San Mateo County (SSMC) is dedicated to the long-term sustainable health of San Mateo County. Established in 1992 by a group of San Mateo County citizens seeking to create a broader awareness of the concept of sustainability -- balancing environmental protection and conservation with the need for social equity and economic vitality -- SSMC educates residents about sustainability issues, works to bring the concept into the mainstream of local decision-making, and seeks to contribute to the long-term improvement of the larger economy, environment, and society.

Situation
For 13 years, SSMC has published the INDICATORS PROJECT, an annual report that follows approximately 30 indicators that represent the foundation for a sustainable community, ranging from air quality and energy use to education and affordable housing. This spring SSMC launched the Sustainability Hub (www.sustainabilityhub.net), a website to empower County residents, businesses, and government leaders to take action to make sustainability a part of their lives. The site provides actionable guidance, in the form of local resources, case studies, and best practices, seeking to empower their constituents to make the leap from "How are we doing?" to "What can I do?"

Project
Now that its Sustainability Hub site has launched, SSMC would like help determining the best way to apply its limited volunteer resources to building traffic to the site and encouraging users to share their ideas and knowledge. Among the questions it hopes ACT consultants can help answer are: Who are the users who would most benefit from the site? How can SSMC best reach them? What other organizations and websites can SSMC partner with to create awareness for the Sustainability Hub?

Location: San Francisco
Skills: Marketing
Issue: How can we build a stronger membership program?
www.ncps.org

Organization
The Northern California Psychiatric Society (NCPS), one of five district branches of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in California, is a professional organization for psychiatrists. The organization runs continuing education programs for psychiatrists and other allied health practitioners, job fairs and an annual meeting. The organization currently has 1200 members; about three-fourth of these are dues paying.

Situation
NCPS's most pressing challenge is replacing older members as they retire. Young doctors will join to take advantage of low membership dues but too often leave the organization when it comes time to be full dues paying members.

Project
The NCPS would like ACT's help strengthening its membership program. How can it create a value proposition and a pricing structure to reach potential members at all stages of their careers?

Location: San Francisco
Skills: Marketing, real estate, finance
Issue: How do we balance maximizing our building's earned income potential with our performing arts and musical education mission?
www.sfgirlschorus.org

Organization
San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) is a world-class performing arts organization featuring the unique and compelling sound of young women's voices. SFGC provides music education for girls from all backgrounds and gives girls the skills, self-discipline and confidence to succeed in music and in life. The Chorus's 2008-2009 season featured four Bay Area concerts, performances with the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera, a performance at President Obama's Inauguration and the Chorus debut at New York's Lincoln Center. Established in 1978, today the Chorus includes several performance and training groups totaling over 350 singers ages 7-18 from 45 cities across the Bay Area. SFGC has an artistic faculty of 3 full-time and 25 part-time people and 11 full-time administrative staff members.

Situation
In September 2005, SFGC took ownership of the Kanbar Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, named after lead capital campaign donor Maurice Kanbar. Today this six-story office building houses administrative offices and five rehearsal spaces for the Chorus. The building also serves as a hub of activity for performing arts organizations in San Francisco's Civic Center neighborhood and beyond. Offices in the building are rented to seven organizations and rehearsal halls are used by 20 groups. Currently all available space is being rented for offices, rehearsals or storage.

Project
The Kanbar Performing Arts Center has provided SFGC with the stability of a permanent home, adding greatly to the Chorus' capacity to serve Bay Area girls. However, the building has not yet become a significant source of earned income. SFGC seeks assistance from an ACT team to help it secure maximum advantages from building ownership and address questions such as:

• What is the building's true potential and capacity, both for SFGC and as an income source?
• How can SFGC best merge mission and income goals in a plan to develop and manage the building?

Location: San Francisco
Skills: Online product distribution, internet marketing or training
Issue: Should we move a parenting curriculum for pregnant and parenting teens to the Web?
www.ahomewithin.org

Organization
A Home Within is a national organization based in San Francisco focused on improving the emotional well being of current and former foster children. The organization's mission is to change the lives of youth in foster care system by attending to their emotional needs and building lasting relationships. Through their formula, "One child. One therapist. For as long as it takes," they offer pro bono psychotherapy to current and former foster youth. The organization currently supports a network of 26 local chapters in fifteen states.

Situation
Not everyone wants individual psychotherapy, particularly pregnant or parenting teens in foster care. Yet both the teens and their infants are at high risk for emotional problems. In addition, many communities with large populations of foster youth like California's Central Valley have very few experienced or highly trained mental health professionals. Often foster parents and staff in group homes have little, no, or poor training in child development, parenting education, and/or the emotional needs of parenting teens. As a result, they often suffer from burn out and/or leave.

To meet the needs of these teens and the professionals who support them, A Home Within has developed an interactive parenting curriculum which integrates principles of developmental theory, trauma theory, theory of change, and attachment theory into a playful, thought-provoking product designed to be used by adults working with pregnant and parenting teens in group settings.

Project
A Home Within is looking for advice about moving this curriculum to the web. They'd like help from someone experienced with web-based products and curriculum to help them understand what it would take to move this program to a successful web-based model and what kind of resources are required to develop an online community of users.

Location: San Jose
Issue: How can Summer Search strategically recruit and build an effective advisory board?
Skills: Marketing
www.summersearch.org/

Organization
Summer Search is a national leadership development program that helps low-income young people to graduate from high school, go to college, gain successful careers, and give back to society. Summer Search began in 1990 when an adolescent counselor in San Francisco sent 14 low-income students to summer experiential projects. Seeing the difficulties which these kids faced reconciling their summer experience of personal growth with the roadblocks and isolation of persistent poverty in their home communities, she began a youth development program which provides high school students with year-round mentoring, life-changing summer experiences, college advising, and a lasting support network. Today Summer Search serves more than 900 students and 2000 alumni through its offices in Silicon Valley, North San Francisco Bay, Seattle, Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Nearly 90% of its participants graduate from college or stay on track to do so.

Situation
After a year of due diligence and a feasibility study, Summer Search Silicon Valley opened in 2005 to serve students in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda Counties. The office is growing steadily towards its goal of supporting 25o students in 2013. Summer Search Silicon Valley is also working to build its advisory board which is a critical component of its strategy of building community reach and local support.

Project
Summer Search would like ACT's help building a strategic plan for board development. How can it best recruit and build a dynamic and effective advisory board? Given its organizational needs and its desire to reach students who reflect the diversity of the South Bay, what are the skills and qualities it should seek as it builds its board?