Education

Bain helped develop the strategy and business plan for launching StudentsFirst, the new organization founded by Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. StudentsFirst is leading a national movement to advocate for common sense reforms that accelerate student achievement.

The Bain team worked with Rhee and her team to build an indepth plan that has helped guide the initial launch and early success of the organization. We have committed to an ongoing partnership with StudentsFirst and are excited by the opportunity to support them in their mission of significantly improving the US educational system. That is one part of our launch of a new education practice in the US that will include pro bono teams in every office.

"I've been incredibly impressed with the results of our collaboration with Bain. They helped us create a strategic plan that we have tremendous confidence in. We couldn’t have produced the quality that we did in the time frame that we did without our Bain partners."

- Michelle Rhee, CEO of StudentsFirst and former Chancellor of Washington DC Public Schools

Every 26 seconds a student in the US drops out of high school. To help combat this phenomenon, more than 20 years ago Bain was integral in the founding of City Year, an "urban peace corps" dedicated to helping children achieve their full potential. We have supported City Year with 12 pro bono cases and thousands of Bain consultants' volunteer hours. City Year is now one of only 14 of the 183,000 nonprofits started since 1971 to achieve annual revenues of more than $40 million.

A recent case with City Year Boston demonstrates the results we've come to expect. Metrics had been declining, morale among corps members was low and the organization was struggling with shrinking donor loyalty. Bain recommended that City Year Boston focus on what they do best, helping kids stay in school through the Whole School, Whole Child program, and discontinue other initiatives. This strategic repositioning delivered a clearer message to donors. Funding increased from $2.7 million to $4 million in less than three years.

Focus on City Year's core

By focusing on its core to help kids stay in school, City Year has achieved results. See the results for one school below.

In 2010, the University of California at Berkeley found itself in a difficult financial position; state funding precipitously dropped while administrative costs continued to grow. Short-term actions had been taken, but these weren't popular or sustainable. Cost reductions had been driven mainly by hiring slowdowns, deferral of salary increases, temporary pay reductions and furloughs. Student fee increases were taking place across the University of California, and yet the university still faced deficits.

Impressed with Bain's results at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UC Berkeley asked us to help. Bain's work paved the way for a new beginning: $85 million to $125 million in savings was identified from dozens of new initiatives, including better managing procurement, restructuring the organization and modernizing services through systems improvements. To put these savings in perspective, every incremental $25 million in savings was equivalent to avoiding an approximate 13 percent increase in student fees, approximately 10 to 20 furlough days for each affected employee or raising an additional $500 million endowment.