The Gates Foundation chose Square Button Consulting to analyze the total cost of operating a quality career pathway model and to develop financial sustainability plans for a cohort of seven pathways intermediaries. SBC developed a customized cost framework for the project along with a total cost analysis and individualized cost model for each intermediary. SBC also provided technical assistance for the intermediaries to help them develop financial sustainability plans to diversify funding and grow public and earned revenues to advance and scale their work. Several intermediaries secured large new funding sources in line with their plan. This work has informed the Gates Foundation and its community of practice in their work to develop, validate and codify exemplar models of career pathways intermediaries.
Financial Value Creation
The Urban League of Louisiana partnered with Square Button to launch the SEE CHANGE Collective (the Collective), a long-term collective impact initiative focused on closing the racial wealth gap for Blacks, Hispanics, and Latinos in the Greater New Orleans region. SBC is providing strategic advice and serving as the project management team, aligning the Collective’s multiple stakeholder groups – including the Urban League of Louisiana, the backbone organization; a Steering Committee of local practitioners; and the National Advisory Committee made up of thought leaders and change makers – and guiding them through the collective impact process. SBC is mapping out the SEE CHANGE Collective’s shared agenda; developing and maintaining a multi-phased project plan; conducting research and producing a landscape scan to inform stakeholders; managing a planning process to develop the Collective’s Theory of Change; and crafting a comprehensive engagement plan to ensure the lived experiences of community members is considered in all of the Collective’s work.
Implementation Support
Square Button Consulting reviewed the organizational structure and budget and developed a centralized office that would manage innovation efforts throughout the organization. In addition, SBC evaluated 15 opportunities to improve value, political risk, and ease of implementation. SBC also recommended a more streamlined organizational structure and three opportunities that were collectively worth over $750K in annual value.
Full Potential Analysis
The Greater New Orleans Foundation selected Square Button Consulting to investigate how schools and community partners could equitably address the highest priority needs facing New Orleans students. Square Button conducted a structural analysis by examining the racial inequities inherited from the historical national and local education policy context, identifying the present conditions resulting from that context, prioritizing a set of needs to close the gap between the current conditions and the desired experience for students, recommending a set of interventions, and estimating the resources, including but not limited to partnerships, required to implement the interventions. SBC highlighted four urgent areas of need and three critical enablers and recommended how schools and community partners could increase resources, coordination, partnership, and investments to improve student support and performance.
Full Potential Analysis
Square Button Consulting conducted an Operations, Management Systems, and Organizational Review of the Harris County, TX Universal Services Department (USD). SBC identified USD’s strengths and weaknesses as well as organizational, policy, and operational opportunities for improvement in the department. To aid USD’s efforts, SBC recommended creating a more formal, centralized IT service delivery model, reinforcing IT Service Management processes and tools, and integrating more equitable data practices. In addition to these measures, SBC also estimated the resources necessary to implement each of the recommendations.
Full Potential Analysis
Square Button Consulting was chosen to redesign the organizational structure and improve talent management practices to establish a strong foundation for establishing and growing a local education agency. SBC recommended a new organizational chart, job descriptions, employee evaluations, and a budget based on three-year revenue projections under traditional, socially distanced, remote, and hybrid scenarios.
Full Potential Analysis
SBC was selected by Teachers Like Me to assist in codifying it’s program model and to develop a strategic plan that would facilitate growth and sustainability. SBC examined and refined TLM’s Theory of Change, clarified the program’s key performance indicators, determined the short and long-term capacity needs required to achieve objectives, and further identified the resources and partnerships that would bolster TLM’s program delivery and scale. SBC prepared an external-facing strategic plan TLM could use to articulate its value proposition to potential stakeholders and provided TLM a financial model incorporating recommendations and forecasting program revenues and costs, including the staff and other resources required for operation and growth for 5-years.
Full Potential Analysis
Square Button Consulting helped the founding Executive Director of the New Orleans Youth Alliance – an intermediary that works to cultivate a system of high-quality, well-resourced youth development organizations that center youth leadership and racial equity in their work with young people – articulate, validate, and refine the organization’s strategy and business model. The resulting business plan and financial model will guide the organization’s course for the next 3-5 years.
Startup Planning
Three entrepreneurial organizations in The Idea Village’s ENERGYx cohort needed expert guidance to create five-year cash flow projections. The three businesses were in varying phases of the startup process and had diverse revenue streams and expenses. SBC created a flexible financial model to meet the needs of the individual companies with only three one-on-one working sessions. The initial working sessions helped the entrepreneurs examine the financial aspect of their business model – focusing on the amount and timing of revenue and expenses. At the last session, SBC trained the entrepreneurs to use the financial model as a tool for future projections as their companies mature.
Startup Planning
New Pathways New Orleans (NPNO), an intermediary that builds cross-sector solutions for New Orleans youth with significant needs, engaged SBC to analyze the local ecosystem of youth-serving organizations, research “collective impact” organizations across the country, refine the organization’s theory of change, identify the resources (staff, technology, etc.) necessary to achieve the vision, build a multi-year budget and determine key success metrics. NPNO has built a staff that is executing a three-year implementation plan focused on specific outcomes for special education, mental and behavioral health, and juvenile justice.
Startup Planning
Square Button Consulting reimplemented the human resources module of NOLA Public Schools’ ERP application, Munis. SBC defined functional requirements, conducted a gap analysis, redesigned processes (including performance management), re-configured the software, performed testing, trained NOLA Public Schools’ staff, and successfully launched the solution. SBC also gathered requirements, evaluated applications, and developed a project plan for NOLA Public Schools to implement a document management system.
Implementation Support
SBC partnered with NOCCA to produce a detailed transportation study to support the school’s effort to increase student enrollment by providing equitable transportation services to deserving students across the region. To determine which students should gain access to NOCCA’s program, SBC examined NOCCA’s enrollment criteria, census tract data for the region, and historical trends of sending schools. SBC conducted a feasibility study of alternative transportation options NOCCA could deploy to reach a greater number of students across the region. As a result, SBC provided NOCCA with a final transportation plan and 5-year financial model that proposed NOCCA adopt transportation to increase access to sixteen sending schools reaching nearly 250 new students annually.
Full Potential Analysis
