Don't look now, but we're being "Bridgespanned"
They sell nonprofit expertise and their Founder just joined the Gates Board. But this is Bain's model. Nonprofits should pay attention, and maybe push back.
Earlier this month, the Gates Foundation announced the addition of a trio of trustees who are purported to steer the philanthropic behemoth past the high profile split of the charitable power couple.
While this blogger is not a huge fan of the Gates Foundation - with their $500M annual infrastructure burn rate and massive climate footprint due to extensive private jet travel - the world has no choice but to dance.
What I found troubling was Gates’s addition of Tom Tierney, co-Founder of The Bridgespan Group. This appointment is the zenith of what I call the “Bridgespanning” of the nonprofit sector, kind of like Train Spotting without all the heroin. And to demonstrate what I mean by this, I wanted to unpack one of Bridgespan’s assertions: that Bridgespan staff are “deeply experienced in the social sector.”
Say what now?
That’s because while the Bridgespan Group presents itself as experts with deep social sector experience, in reality their leadership have no deep experience in the social sector and instead apply management consulting tools they learned at Bain & Company to philanthropy.
That’s like a sushi chef telling a customer that she’s also a fisherman.
Let me explain.
It starts with an examination of the co-Founders of Bridgespan, Jeff Bradach and Tom Tierney. Jeff founded Bridgespan while he was a Harvard Business School professor in Organizational Behavior after spending the majority of his career at Bain & Company. Tom Tierney spent more than 20 years at Bain after going “K through MBA” after which he landed at Bain and worked for Mitt Romney, who together grew Bain into an enviable private equity-layoffs-to-bread-lines engine - a process Bain calls “Strategic Downsizing”.
So no nonprofit experience at the founder level. But maybe there’s some in the trenches? So I went ahead and checked out the public LinkedIn Profiles of the Bain senior leadership, hoping to see examples of this transformational nonprofit expertise.
But instead, all I saw was more Bain.
New York Partner Alex Neuhoff spent his entire pre-Bridgespan career at Bain & Company. He helped develop growth strategies for major healthcare, consumer products, and software companies. Boston Partner Allana Jackson spent her entire pre-Bridgespan career as a manager at Bain & Company working in its Consumer Goods & Retail Practice. There she helped clients with a range of issues including organizational effectiveness, growth strategy, and mergers & acquisitions.
It’s almost like they had experience running a nonprofit - if your nonprofit sold MRI machines or razor blades.
Then there’s William Foster, who spent 3 years at Bain then went full-time at Bridgespan and credits himself with “structuring and supports required for philanthropic “big bets” and strong funding models for nonprofits.” That’s Bananas, Foster! I would find it really hard to ascertain what makes an organization “bettable” if you’ve never worked for one.
There’s also Bridgespan’s head of their “Impact Advisory Team” in Africa, Chris Addy. You guessed it, also Bain. But wait! Chris spent 5 years as an adventure travel guide and teacher so I guess that might give him some credibility. But after 5 years of that Chris went to business school then - you guessed it! - right to Bain, and then to Bridgespan.
Another Partner at Bridgespan, Donald Yeh, did spend 2 years at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. But prior to Lincoln Center Yeh was (what else!) a manager at Bain & Company, where he advised global clients on operating model design and organizational effectiveness. Still, not exactly the kind of guy who has expert knowledge in the inner workings of a charitable organization. Though he did spend two years at one. You know, before he quit.
Gail Perrault, Practice Leader and head of “Bridgespan Knowledge” did spend 20 months working for the One8 Foundation. But prior to One8 Gail was a consultant at….wait for it…Bain & Company….where she was an early member of the firm's private equity group. Which means that before she went to Bridgespan, Gail learned herself some “Strategic Downsizing”.
And it’s not just Bain. Bridgespan seems to only hire ex-consultants.
Bridgespan’s head of advisory services in Asia and Africa is Andrew Belton, formerly of Oliver Wyman, who was a partner in the Communications Information & Entertainment Practice. Maybe he works the phones?
Nidhi Sahni, who runs Bridgespan’s US Advisory was an associate principal with boutique private equity firm Marakon Associates, a firm that refers to downsizing as “Value Capture” (LOL!). At Marakon she focused on strategy development for Fortune 500 companies. That’s almost like working with nonprofits, right?
No. Not at all.
Nidhi’s most recent article out of the Skoll Foundation talks about the need for legacy donors to rid themselves of biases in their systems, bias in their criteria, the bias in their due diligence, and their traditional definitions of good leadership.
This observation comes from somebody who has spent zero hours working for a nonprofit (literally, ZERO experience in the space).
Even Peter Kim, head of HR, comes from Goldman Sachs.
Are we all to believe Bridgespan’s claim of having “deep experience in the social sector” as stated on their website? This is the kind of place that has $100M in revenues? This is the place revectoring charitable donations from the richest people in America only to projects informed by (or exposed to) their algorithms?
OK, I’ll admit that there are some at Bridgspan who might know a thing or two about life at a nonprofit. Jan Schweier worked for 6 years for International Finance Corp in Africa (after a 10-year career in consulting of course) and CTO James Lum ran a nonprofit and social services company for 20 years. Nithin Iyengar spent seven years as an educator and district leader working in prior roles in Pittsburg Unified School District, Oakland Unified School District, and the School District of Philadelphia. Preeta Nayak was a classroom teacher and nonprofit manager (though shifted gears and got an MBA at Wharton). Pritha Venkatachalam was a public health leader.
Still: Bridgespan gives itself huge marks for its depth of wisdom in evaluating nonprofits and telling donors which ones are worth it, and which are not. That’s an extraordinary amount of power in the hands of sushi chefs.
And when the average nonprofit has more experience sitting in their break room than the cumulative experience of a firm advising billionaire philanthropists on how and where to allocate their resources, you have to wonder what the unintended consequences will be.
Well, in case you’re wondering, here are my predictions:
Bridgespan and the philanthropic advisory enterprise will kill the fundraising profession. Just as AI-driven fundraising is hollowing out annual fund programs and direct mail, barbelling wealth in this country will cause more individuals to gravitate to “consultants” to assist with the distribution of their assets. This means that Bridgespan and other firms will gain more business by necessity and only fund projects biased towards their algorithms. That means traditional "fundraisers” for Universities, hospitals, art museums, symphonies, etc. will become nearly obsolete. And that means unemployed fundraising professionals, or thousands of professionals pursuing smaller gifts ($1 in $8 going to DAFs, in addition to those siphoned into “fees” and “big bets” (LOL) at places like Bridgespan), or no gifts at all. Worse, these “consultants” will now play kingmakers to charitable organizations and use their newfound power to make (and break) organizations they deem unworthy or, worse, who don’t bow deeply to Bridgespan. It’s a new power, and it’s pretty messed up because what if Bridgespan’s algorithms are wrong?
Over time, the impact projected by Bridgespan consultants and presented to their clients will be wildly optimistic. That’s because nonprofits aren’t structured to take advantage of the tools of consultancies: Value Capture, Strategic Downsizing, Corporate reorganization, merger, or acquisition. The tools learned at Bain. And because nonprofits are driven by one expensive input - people - they cannot go through managerial restructurings without severe disruption to the services they provide to constituents. So the Bridgespan toolkit is rendered essentially useless relative to the advice they’re providing because whatever projections Bridgespan presents to their clients is nothing more than a highly polished MBA dart-throwing exercise. Because there is no way to project outcomes using the tools they bring from Bain. It’s like bringing a surfboard to a ski mountain and trying to play lacrosse.
Donors won’t care about the above, because they’re not investors, but this will come to feel like real philanthropy, so the Bridgespanning of our world will grow and grow without correction.
Young people inclined to “mission-driven” work will gravitate to consultancies like Bridgespan and away from the hard work of running a nonprofit, further hollowing out the talent pool for the nonprofit sector. So thanks for that.
This piece is not about shade - though that was kinda fun to throw shade - rather, it is about questioning Bridgespan’s assertions about having deep nonprofit expertise.
Because when you look closely, they really don’t.
And yet, Bridgespan advises philanthropists everywhere in ways that are and will become, I believe, detrimental to the nonprofit industry. And now the Founder of Bridgespan sits on the Board of the World’s Largest Private Foundation.
And that should be of concern to every nonprofit sector employee.
The Bain toolkit might work for Gilette and STAPLES but its tools do not translate directly to the nonprofit sector. It’s like saying you know how to build a jet because you also built an airport. Worse, Bridgespan generates $100M in fees, another drain on already stretched charity budgets (see also, Donor Advised Funds)
It might be time for the charitable and nonprofit sector to push back on, or at least question, the Bridgespanning of our industry. Before it’s too late.