At a Glance
COMPANY
Social impact nonprofit aiming to rewire the U.S. labor market so all individuals Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) can work, learn, and earn to their full potential.
OBJECTIVE
Rebuild a nonprofit’s Strategic Alliances department to grow partnerships and revenue.
OUTCOME
A rebuilding journey that strengthened the sense of ‘team’ while improving clarity, capacity, effectiveness and morale.
Challenge
After two years of rapid growth, the Strategic Alliances team role had become less clear. Multiple teams were engaging the market, yet there was organization-wide uncertainty around target audience, offerings, activation strategy and success metrics. The organization also lacked the operational infrastructure to effectively track, collaborate on and support its relationships.
Internally this misalignment hindered the team’s ability to structure effectively, agree to roles & responsibilities and make decisions without frustration and delay. Externally, prospects and partners were engaged by different people, in different ways which created confusion, frustration and missed opportunities.
Overall the Strategic Alliances team felt frustrated and was faced with cross-department tension and low morale.
Solution
A department redefinition and rebuild was needed, but completed in a way that enabled continual delivery on partnership and fundraising goals. In partnership with the VP, Strategic Alliances, a phased approach was mapped out, with 5 sub-projects completed over 10 months.
Project 1 - Department Redefinition & Buildout, aligned through 1x1s and stakeholder workshops:
Gold Deck to capture new department purpose, structure, segmentation, success metrics, roles.
New roles hired to complete the team.
Cross-department alignment meetings to socialize the redefinition, integrate feedback and build buy-in.
Project 2 - Partnership Management Process & Tools to provide a shared way of working across teams:
Business development process defining what is sold, at what price, to whom, via which sales stages and expectations, and progress metrics.
CRM solution and dashboard to enable partner and funder tracking, management and reporting.
Project 3 - Team Goals & Norms to improve collaboration and results:
Annual goals and individual key results to drive results.
Pipeline & planning meetings to uncover opportunities and roadblocks.
Team intranet to centralize information and improve collaboration.
Project 4 - Account Management to ensure partner satisfaction and results:
Account management templates, best practices & account plans for priority accounts.
Project 5 - Partner & Funder Packages to support skills-first hiring efforts:
Product solution (Opportunity@Work ‘Menu’ draft) inline with business strategy, target prospects, market engagement approach, pricing strategy and sales approach.
Impact
Team confidence. Clear team definition, structure and roles strengthened team identity, accountability and proactivity.
Team efficiency and effectiveness. Shared tools, templates, standards and processes improved collaboration, consistency and quality of work.
Greater insight and improved decision-making. A well-designed CRM greatly improved business visibility, making priorities, decisions and obstacles easier to uncover.
Improved morale and team commitment. With less tension and confusion and greater effectiveness came improved attitudes, behaviors and camaraderie.
Michelle is that winning combination of consultant + coach + contributor; her skillset is versatile and her delivery is responsive and collaborative. She was an essential partner in building a new enterprise sales/partnership function for our national social enterprise and provided thoughtful, clear guidance on everything from team structure to partnership process development to big-picture strategy.
Georgia Gillette, Vice President Strategic Alliances
Michelle's thoughtful and kind approach paired with her natural ability to bring out the best in a team helped us to operate at a whole new level.
Rachel Providence, Sr Director Resource Mobilization