Bringing long-term planning and documentation skills from a management consultancy to a non-profit

Background

Maersk Management Consulting (MMC) is the consulting arm of the Maersk international shipping group. They wanted to use their skills to help a local community organisation. Their Singapore team approached us to help them find a suitable partner and facilitate working together.

The Breadline Group has been active in Singapore for over 30 years. With the passing of time, they realised that they needed to plan for future leadership succession by clearly documenting and structuring the processes they use to deliver.

What We Did

We were approached by MMC to find a suitable partner and bring them together. This was an interesting union – a group of young professionals in MMC coming together with a local group with a long history of community support.

Firstly, we made sure that the needs of The Breadline Group would be met by the skills that MMC were volunteering to offer. Once both parties had agreed, we then conducted initial workshops to identify and scope the task ahead and make sure everyone involved understood their mutual roles and targets.

We agreed with both groups on a way of identifying areas of improvement that would be developed during the exercise. As The Breadline Group is run by a leadership committee, we also helped make sure that the different members were involved and on board with what was taking place, and that the right people were involved at the right time. At the end of the project, all processes related to case assessment, volunteer management and finance were captured in a format accessible to all stakeholders. The exercise enabled The Breadline Group to redistribute tasks and to streamline and digitalise client intake.

The Results

Both MMS and Breadline Group expressed their satisfaction with the outcome, and with the way that NEEDeed acts as a partner and facilitator. As Richard Lim of The Breadline Group said, “I would recommend NEEDeed to other non-profits as the engagement with them allowed us to access structured, professional support of MMC to document and streamline our processes and, at the same time, to look into areas that should be improved.” Thomas of Maersk Management Consulting added, “We all had to use a wider/different array of skills to ensure the engagement of stakeholders and the long-term impact of our work. NEEDeed made sure we draft a manageable scope, set expectations and focus on doing what we do best. It was a rewarding experience and a win-win to both parties.”