Practical consultancy for mission-driven organisations. Time-boxed, and designed to leave capability behind rather than a document.

What organisations usually ask for

Most organisations that ask for help describe a strategy problem.

A good proportion of the time it is not one. It is that nobody knows who decides. Three people each believe a choice is partly theirs, so it is discussed repeatedly and never made, and the delay gets explained as a lack of direction.

Strategy work on top of that produces a document and no change.

What we work on

Decision rights. Who decides what, who must be consulted, and who is simply told. Writing it down is unglamorous and frequently the single highest-value thing an organisation can do.

Leadership capacity. Organisations outgrow the way they were run at half the size. The founder who did everything becomes the bottleneck, and nobody wants to say so.

Programme design and measurement. Whether what you measure tells you whether the work is succeeding. Many organisations measure activity faithfully and have no idea about outcomes.

Governance. Boards that rubber-stamp, boards that micromanage, boards that have not met properly in a year.

How we work

Time-boxed. An agreed scope and an end date. Open-ended consultancy develops an interest in remaining necessary.

Capability, not recommendations. The test is whether your team can do the thing again after we leave. A report nobody can implement is a cost, not a service.

We will say if we are not the right people. Some problems need a lawyer, an accountant, or a specialist we are not. Saying so quickly is worth more than an engagement that does not help.

Why a foundation offers this

Two reasons, and we would rather state both.

The first is that the work is useful and we are able to do it.

The second is that it generates income, and that income funds the programmes nobody sponsors — the quiet costs of running an organisation honestly, which almost no donor wants to pay for and every organisation has.

Consultancy income is accounted for separately from donations. Money given to fund a student funds a student.