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BoardWalk Consulting operates under the simple premise that compelling causes deserve the very best management teams working in concert with empowered boards. Everything we do in executive search and board enrichment is geared towards "building strong foundations for nonprofits"® and the institutions that champion them.
Tax status is not the defining criterion of our client base; rather it is the individual client's commitment to the public good that drives our work. Accordingly, we are pleased to undertake relevant assignments for corporate clients who share our commitment to the nonprofit sector and its causes.
I. Our Work
Our services fall broadly into three categories, executive search, board enrichment (including board matching), and strategic facilitation.
Executive search is the process by which we help clients build the best possible management teams consistent with their strategy and their resources. Our search work is conducted at the behest of the board; most often, our assignments entail recruiting a new CEO or Executive Director of the client enterprise.
Board enrichment encompasses the development and implementation of board strategy, the recruitment and election of board members, and the development and application of best practices in board governance.
Board matching is a service we offer our corporate clients. By crafting a program for senior management board service, we help ensure a company's contribution of time, its scarcest resource, complements its overall strategic goals, not just its philanthropic ones.
Strategic facilitation is the process by which we help ensure that a client organization clarifies its definitions of future success, establishes benchmarks for progress, and allocates the resources, responsiblities and expectations necessary to realize the organization's ambitions.
We help our nonprofit clients grapple with three critical questions:
- Board strategy: "What should we expect of our board, what should our board expect of its members, and what should board members expect of the organization?"
- Board recruitment: "If we have the right strategy, what sort of people should we have on our board?"
- Best practices in board governance: "If we have the right people, how do we make the best use of the talent we have assembled?"
We help our corporate clients with equally important issues:
- Board strategy: "How can we maximize the impact and effectiveness of our contributions of top management time to community service, whether globally or locally?"
- Board recruitment: "How do we match our limited people resources with the unlimited opportunities for service?"
- Best practices in board governance: "How do we ensure that community service is a career-enhancing activity for our people?"
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II. Our Backgrounds
We are practitioners ourselves. Collectively, we have decades of relevant experience in nonprofits and foundations (see accompanying bios for detail). We have chaired boards, served as executive directors, led search committees and been working volunteers for organizations we support.
Our professional skills and judgment have been honed in roles as staff members, board members and advisors. Together, we have worked with scores of organizations in over 30 states as well as more than a dozen countries outside the U.S. Our recent clients have said some very nice things about us.
We are generalists. We know from experience that leadership lessons have great relevance across organizations, fields and sectors. For example, our work for a local juvenile justice organization may be informed by our experience with a regional theatre group, and our work for a regional foundation might benefit from earlier consultation with a national developer of low-income housing. If all we did was work with museums or family foundations or trade associations, that crossover value would be lost.
We purposefully avoid narrow specialization in one type of nonprofit or in one theory of board governance. We do specialize in the act of bringing together the best people, processes and practices to serve a given client's strategic mission.
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III. Our Values
- We take our work seriously, but not ourselves.
- We are responsive and respectful in all our dealings.
- We are humble about what we do not know.
- We are advisors, not vendors. We will be a partner in your progress and a champion for your challenge.
- We deliver more value than we charge for.
- We strive for excellence in all that we do.
- We pay our dues, through support of and service to the sector.
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IV. Our Approach
We start with the strategy. All of our work emphasizes the links between strategy, mission, people and processes. Our constant goal is to help clients be as effective as possible in pursuit of their missions by reinforcing the relationship between our work and their strategy.
We have a bias for action. Because financial resources are always at a premium for the clients we serve, we maintain a conscious balance between process and pragmatism. We do not seek perfect explanations to theoretical problems. We focus on finding and implementing solutions that can make a difference to the mission.
But we have respect for process. Too often, shortcuts are merely the best way to get to the wrong answer faster. We resist analysis paralysis, but we also resist the temptation to jump to a solution without having done the proper homework. There is no substitute for preparation, especially at the beginning of a project, and we counsel our clients to take whatever time is necessary to lay the foundation for a successful engagement.
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