Mission Squared supports mission-driven organizations to overcome the strategic, cultural, financial and scaling challenges every team faces—especially in times of change or growth.
We work closely with partners to understand their desired impact and holistically support decision-making with both short and long-term opportunities in mind.
WE BELIEVE EACH OF THESE AREAS IMPACT THE OTHERS AND WILL HELP YOUR ORGANIZATION ANSWER COMMON QUESTIONS IN EACH:
STRATEGIC CLARITY: What you are working to achieve and why? What are various paths to your desired outcome? How do your decisions and actions align with the strategy you’ve chosen to get there? Under what circumstances might you consciously alter your path? How do you ultimately stay on track to your “north star” if you do?
TEAM CULTURE: How do you maximize the talents of the individuals on your team for the benefit of the whole? How do you design and live by shared values at work that undergird every person’s decisions? How can teammates learn to regularly seek out each other’s perspectives with a spirit of generosity rather than jumping to ungracious conclusions? How can you tackle problems – not each other?
FINANCIAL HEALTH: How much money do you need? What are your best sources for finding it? What systems will best support you to build a network of supporters and to consistently know where you stand in relationship to your goals? How can you inspire donors to be champions for your mission as much as you are?
SCALING IMPACT: Should you grow? Will it increase your impact? How much and in what way? To more places? Through more people or more intense focus on a smaller number? Through partnerships? How can you best leverage networks – both of individuals and/or parts of your organization to make each member of the network stronger, sooner and more efficiently?
“Amy and Mission Squared have taken the time to understand our work and what sets us apart from other organizations, allowing them to develop recommendations and tools that take our unique mission into account. They’re as mindful of our ultimate aims as we are and collaborate with us to adapt as needed to ensure the work we’re doing with them truly takes us forward rather than sticking to an idea or process that may no longer serve our needs.”
“Mission Squared helped our small network of international charter schools develop a robust five-year strategic plan at a critically important time after our founder and CEO passed away. They helped us manage a process that required multiple stakeholders to build on our past successes and also work toward more scale and impact going forward. We now have a plan that will be challenging but doable to achieve and we have the necessary buy-in from all the main players on the path forward. Mission Squared has also helped us anticipate the opportunities and risks we will likely experience as we begin implementation this year, which increases our confidence that we can do it.”
“It’s very helpful that Mission Squared founder, Amy Black, has personally experienced every aspect of executive nonprofit work—and learned from both the good and the bad. She has built and funded nonprofits. She understands the landscape, often full of contradictions, and has wrestled with tough questions of organizational structure and management—and succeeded. This gives her the understanding and empathy you can only get from having been there. ”
What Makes Mission Squared Unique?
WE KNOW CONTEXT MATTERS
Every team we support has a different mission about which they are passionate. While recognizing trends across successful (and struggling) organizations is helpful in making better choices, we also know “one size fits all” answers may have limited applicability for our partners and seek to understand their context including the unique personalities, organizational history and external ecosystem they are navigating in order to find solutions that will work for them.
WE TAKE A HOLISTIC APPROACH
While we often dive in with our partners to address a particular opportunity or challenge, we do so in a way that takes into account how changes in one area will impact the whole. Even when on the “dance floor” helping our partners with often pressing needs, we simultaneously work with them to hold a “balcony” view – taking into consideration both the bigger picture and longer-term implications of the choices they are making.
WE HAVE BEEN THERE
Every member of the Mission Squared Team has led or worked in mission-driven organizations and has experienced first-hand the highs and lows of working tirelessly to see impact. We respect entrepreneurial leaders and teams who choose to tackle big problems and have made it our mission to support you based on our decades of being in similar situations and ultimately coming through the lows to achieve measurable successes.
Missions We’ve Supported
