McKinsey is a global management consulting firm committed to helping organizations accelerate sustainable and inclusive growth. We work with clients across the private, public, and social sectors to solve complex problems and create positive social change for all of their stakeholders. We combine bold strategies and transformative technologies to help organizations innovate more sustainably, achieve lasting gains in performance, and build workforces that will thrive for this generation and the next.
Within our social sector practice, we work with private & corporate foundations, NGOs & nonprofit organizations, multilateral agencies, educational institutions at all levels, family offices, individual philanthropists, and public-private partnerships to amplify their social impact and drive systems-level change. We work with this full spectrum of social impact organizations to support them in realizing their ambitious goals – whether that is to scale their operations, deepen their impact, create new offerings, or ensure their long-term financial sustainability.
Philosophy/Approach: We see philanthropy as a uniquely flexible, risk-taking, and innovative part of the social change ecosystem. Philanthropy holds the potential to spark the breakthroughs we need to solve vexing societal problems. Furthermore, we believe nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations and educational institutions catalyze this impact by providing services and opportunities in local communities and around the world. Nonprofits play a critical role in filling gaps left by the public and private sectors, spurring innovation, and advocating for broader change.
We bring the best of our global firm to every engagement, drawing on our deep expertise in strategy, operations, marketing, organizational health, risk, and sustainability, developed through our unrivaled experience working across the private, public and social sectors. Regardless of the specific area of focus – health, gender & racial equity, education, environmental sustainability, economic development, arts & culture, financial inclusion, agriculture, infrastructure, urban development, etc. – we support our social sector clients in delivering against their aspirations and generating lasting results to improve the lives of millions globally.
Types of clients: Private foundations, Corporations, Community foundations, Individual donors, Small to mid-size nonprofits, Major nonprofits, Universities
Issues/Focus: Arts & Culture, Civic, Economy, Education, Environment, Global, Health, Science, Social
Specialization: We work with private and corporate foundations, family offices, philanthropic LLCs, and high net worth individuals to:
Design and launch new philanthropic organizations – Working with philanthropists to determine their vision and design new philanthropic entities or initiatives that deliver on their social impact goals, supporting all aspects of strategy development, operating & governance model design, and organizational design.
Create signature initiatives for foundations - Developing the strategy and implementation plans for major signature philanthropic initiatives that deploy significant capital focused on a targeted problem or issue area.
Refresh philanthropic strategies – Collaborating with established foundations and philanthropies, we help develop their overall and issue area-specific theories of change and theories of action, designing new or refreshed strategies for investment portfolios or program areas.
Design operations, organizational structures, and governance models – Strengthening organizational design, governance processes, and the efficiency of back-office functions in order to increase organizational health and performance.
Ensure success of high-priority grantees - Working directly with the grantees of our foundation partners to support them in designing and deploying major initiatives from strategy through to implementation.
Launch multi-donor initiatives – Bringing together multiple donors or investors and supporting them in designing philanthropic partnerships that pool and deploy capital, or facilitate the strategic alignment of grant-making in order to magnify the scale of their impact.
Evaluate impact - Establishing processes for sound measurement and evaluation, centering community voices and lived experiences to understand what’s working and what’s not over time.
We collaborate with nonprofits and NGOs to:
Develop strategies for new programs – Working with our nonprofit clients to develop their theory of change, theory of action and strategy for new programs, conducting deep root cause analysis and needs assessments, identifying potential solution levers, evaluating evidence, and examining key trends.
Refresh overall or issue-area specific strategies – Collaborating with established nonprofit organizations, we help refresh their overall or issue-area specific strategies to respond to new trends and challenges or adapt to new geographies and/or communities.
Support launch and implementation of new initiatives - Developing the strategy, implementation and stakeholder engagement plans to launch a new initiative and providing operational support.
Redesign organizational structures and governance models – Improving organizational health and performance by enhancing structures, processes and ways of working, including culture change.
Improve operational effectiveness – Helping nonprofits deliver programs and opportunities more efficiently and effectively, by revamping both programmatic operations and back-office functions.
We work with educational systems and institutions to:
Support whole-system reform efforts - Working alongside our system clients to set system-level priorities for educational outcomes, diagnose existing performance across the drivers of system-improvement, identify levers to improve performance, and support implementation of reforms
Develop and support institutional strategy – Helping educational institutions reimagine the future by defining and implementing bold, path-breaking strategies with an eye to accelerating organizational and cultural health, and creating the foundations for sustained performance excellence and improved student outcomes
Advance critical priorities – Working with systems to define and sharpen their strategic priorities and implement new initiatives successfully, by including a range of stakeholder perspectives and research-based insights, aligning on metrics for success, reallocating resources to areas of greatest need, and building the organizational processes and capacity to execute
Support digital transformation - Harness technology at the student, teacher and system level to increase access to quality instruction and improve personalization of learning, including launching and developing new digital education access platforms
Improve productivity and alignment - Align resources (time, funding, people) to strategic priorities to drive student outcomes and equity, and improve administrative and financial efficiency to boost productivity and financial sustainability
Build capabilities - Supporting education systems and institutions to recruit, develop, and retain excellent teachers/faculty and administrators through training and coaching programs, hiring strategies, and continued education planning
Develop partnerships – Support our clients to develop partnerships across the private, social and public education sectors to enhance student outcomes – including impact investing, public-private partnerships, and innovative finance
We’d be delighted to share client testimonials upon request. Please reach out to us for more information.