Community Consulting Teams – Boston

Project Application

Project Year 2010-2011

Community Consulting Teams – Boston: Overview

Founded in 1990, Community Consulting Teams – Boston (CCT) is an organization of experienced

MBAs whose purpose is to help socially conscious Boston area non-profit organizations address some of
the strategic issues they encounter in furthering their missions. CCT recruits business professionals who
have earned MBAs from leading business schools and organizes them into volunteer teams of four to six
team members and a project manager. These teams are matched against the needs of local non-profit
organizations to address a specific problem in a team-based consulting project lasting four to five months.

CCT is soliciting applications from non-profits seeking assistance. Approximately 7-8 non-profit
organizations with a Metro Boston presence will be selected.

Applications from interested non-profits are due October 4, 2010. We encourage applicants to
submit applications before the October 4th due date, if possible. Projects will be selected later in the
fall, teams will be staffed in December, and projects will begin in January 2011. Services are provided by
volunteers and are free of charge to the non-profit organization.

Community Consulting Teams has served more than 100 diverse organizations in the Boston area and
focuses on the areas of social services, youth, education, environment, and arts. Past clients include: The
Boston Rescue Mission, Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, Boston Collegiate Charter School,
Boys and Girls Club of Middlesex County, Centro Latino, Charles River Conservancy, Community
Music Center, Danforth Museum of Art, The Food Project, Friends of Shattuck Shelter, The Learning
Center for Deaf Children, Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, The Second Step, Springstep, YWCA Boston.

To learn more about CCT, please visit our website at www.cctboston.org.

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2010/2011 Project Application

Project Selection Criteria

Organization Type and Size:
• The organization must be a 501(c)3.
• CCT generally works with mid-sized non-profits. The organization should have a budget between
$500k-$5MM, with at least 3FTEs.
• The organization must be, as a practical matter, unable to afford paid consulting services.
• The organization must be financially and operationally stable enough to benefit from a consulting
engagement.

Location:
• To accommodate our volunteers and facilitate routine interactions, potential clients should be
within the Metro Boston area (generally defined as within the I-495 loop).
• However, potential clients do not need to be headquartered in Boston. We will work with the
local chapter of a larger organization if that local chapter has significant autonomy.

Project Requirements:
Importance:
• The issue to be addressed should be important for the organization’s long-term growth
• It should be well defined and bounded, with specific topics to be addressed.
• It should focus on a management problem where business professionals with MBAs and varied
work backgrounds will be able to make meaningful contributions. Projects requiring external or
internal research and analysis are particularly appropriate.

Project scope and timing:

• The issue(s) should be narrow enough in scope to be addressed within a 4-5 month period by a
four-to six-person team of volunteer business professionals, each devoting approximately 12-16 hours
per month.
• The project should be one that can be started in January 2011 and finished by the end of
May/early June 2011.

Common project types from successful past applicants have fallen within the following areas:
• Marketing strategies
• Membership strategies
• Growth strategies
• Operational effectiveness
• Business plan development & feasibility analysis
• Organization design and resource usage
Important Note: Projects should have narrowly focused scopes, to enable the project
team to provide actionable plans and deliverables within the time available. These
types of projects have proven to be the most successful in the past. CCT does not
undertake projects to develop fundraising strategies, campaigns or activities, or
assist with board recruitment or development. (See website for examples.)

Client Requirements:
We have found through experience that the nature of the client organization has a significant impact on
the outcome. Accordingly, we tend to look for organizations that have the following characteristics:
 Community Consulting Teams — Boston
2010/2011 Project Application

• One or more dynamic leaders who can dedicate time to working with a consulting team and are
open to advice from business professionals.
• An action-oriented organization seeking to continuously improve its performance.
• A Board that is highly engaged, including at least one member who is willing to serve as a project
champion.
 Community Consulting Teams — Boston
2010/2011 Project Application

Application Review and Project Selection Process

Major Process Step Timeframe
• Applications submitted Due date: October 4, 2010
• Semi-finalists selected and contacted by CCT for Mid-October 2010
phone interview
• Finalists selected and contacted by CCT for site Early November 2010
visit
• Clients notified of project selection Early December 2010
• Teams Begin Work with Client Kick-Off Mid-January 2011
• Teams complete work End of May/Early June 2011

Applicants will be notified of application status via telephone or e-mail at each

stage of the selection process.

Instructions
1. Complete the following application.
2. Please submit your application via e-mail by October 4, 2010, to Laura Ward
at client@cctboston.org and attach a one-page description of your organization’s
mission and activities, or an electronic version of a brochure. If you do not have
electronic copies of a brochure, please indicate so in your e-mail.
3. Please direct any questions you may have to Laura Ward, via e-mail (above).
4. We encourage applicants to submit applications before the October
4th due date, if possible.
 Community Consulting Teams — Boston
2010/2011 Project Application

Project Application Form

All application information will be treated confidentially.
Feel free to use additional pages or to type additional lines beyond the space provided for each question.

Contact Information

Organization name:
Address:
Phone:
Web site:
Initial contact name:
Contact title:
Contact phone (if different from above):
Contact email:
Project liaison name (if different):
Liaison title:
Liaison phone:
Liaison email:
Board member “champion”
for proposed project:
(not required for initial application;
required prior to final selection)

Organization Overview

Are you a 501(c)3 organization?

How many employees do you have? Have you had any recent changes or additions to your staff?

When and where were you founded?

What are your annual budgets for 2010 (actual), and 2011 (projected or actual)?
2010:
2011:

What is your organization’s mission?

Applicants should feel free to include additional pages or electronic copies of brochures with the application. Please e-mail
applications along with a one page description of your organization or brochure to Laura Ward at client@cctboston.org. by
October 4th 2010. Please direct any questions to Laura Ward, via e-mail.
 Community Consulting Teams — Boston
2010/2011 Project Application

What are the major challenges your organization faces at this time?

☐ Awareness/Marketing
☐ Membership strategies
☐ Operational
☐ Human Resources
☐ Organizational structure
☐ Financial
☐ Growth Plans
☐ Other (please explain) _____________________________________

What are your primary sources of funding? Have they changed significantly in the past two years?

Have you previously used outside consultants? What was your experience?

Project Overview

Be sure to consider the “Project Selection Criteria” described earlier in this document, in
particular the issues of project scope and timing.

What question or issue would you like to have Community Consulting Teams address with you? Please
provide any additional information that will help CCT understand the issue or question in the context of
your organization today. (See attached for successful project statements from past years.)

Describe briefly the significance of this issue to the future of your organization and why you are
interested in having a consulting team help your organization tackle it:

Applicants should feel free to include additional pages or electronic copies of brochures with the application. Please e-mail
applications along with a one page description of your organization or brochure to Laura Ward at client@cctboston.org. by
October 4th 2010. Please direct any questions to Laura Ward, via e-mail.
 Community Consulting Teams — Boston
2010/2011 Project Application

Sample Project Statements

The following are examples of successful project statements from prior years’ applications, with specific
information deleted to ensure client confidentiality. Note that while the types of problems described in the
statements vary widely, each statement begins with a specific issue (organizational design and resource
usage; technical development plan; increasing visibility). Each also outlines specific constraints or other
obstacles that make the issue difficult to resolve internally. Organization 1’s statement is strengthened
through a brief “technical” analysis of the impact of the problem on the organization, and obstacles
associated with solving it. Organizations 2 and 3 provide simpler project statements that are also clear in
defining a problem and its significance to the organization.

Organization 1:
What is the best organizational design and resource usage to create greater operational effectiveness? [Org] is a
unique organization in terms of its structure; we combine [educational, professional, and outreach] programs
(grant funded). There are very few organizations like us in the entire country. As an organization, our growth in
programming has outpaced our growth in infrastructure (both financial and systems) to support it.

We have accumulated debt approaching [$X] as well as a projected [$Y] operating budget deficit and must solve
this problem. Our limited benchmarking of partially similar organizations has shown that our staffing for marketing
and development is a much higher percentage of revenues, but it is only [X] FTE in marketing and [X] FTE in
development (in addition to the Executive Director). In a deficit situation, we hesitate to reduce the very resources
that are focused on bringing in revenue and contributions. We are searching for greater operational effectiveness
through organizational design/resource use so that we can accomplish this goal while continuing to fulfill our
mission and maintain our level of programming.

Utilizing benchmarking and best practices continues to be a challenge, for example: What earned/contributed
income ratio is appropriate for our organization? Nationally, [for comparable educational organizations, the] ratio
is 80/20. [Comparable professional organizations] generally have a ratio of about 40/60. Where should we be and
how can we best achieve this and with what staffing levels? How should we use benchmarking information?

Organization 2:
One element of the strategic plan that has yet to be addressed is the technical development plan. [Org] has come to
a crossroads where it must decide how to invest in and improve its current technology. Essentially, we need to
embark on a project to determine what we have in place currently, what we want our systems to look like in the
future, and how we are going to get from where we are to where we want to be. We will need to find capital to build
the infrastructure, the resources to implement it and equipment to utilize it. To manage this process, however, we
need a project management team, and [Org] does not have additional capacity to allocate someone to that role. It
is our goal that your team would manage this process in order to help us address our technical development goals.

Organization 3:
We would like [CCT] to take on the task of increasing our visibility to our core constituency. We continue to have
difficulty spreading the word that we are here and have so much to offer. We don’t have a staff member in charge of
PR and there is not a budget in place for PR. [The end result would be] a specific plan for ensuring that the average
family knows [Org name] throughout the metro Boston area.