Helping the Mangrove Conservation Foundation (MCF) define its strategy
Helping the Mangrove Conservation Foundation (MCF) define its strategy
The MCF was facing funding challenges—it had ambitious targets and yet its existing funding and development model weren't supporting that growth. The board engaged Bain to help improve the foundation’s operations and refresh its strategic direction.
These teams helped MCF define its strategy
Bain teams completed multiple projects for MCF over several years. Most recently, the consulting and expert teams helped the foundation refresh its strategy and review how the organization had implemented the prior strategy work.
These teams helped MCF define its strategy
Bain teams completed multiple projects for MCF over several years. Most recently, the consulting and expert teams helped the foundation refresh its strategy and review how the organization had implemented the prior strategy work.
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Bain Marketing
The creative services team created marketing materials and the rest of the team helped track ad effectiveness for online fundraising campaigns.
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Expert Consulting
Bain’s social impact experts shared insights into how other global nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and leading intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) organize, manage budgets, and plan.
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General Consulting
Consultants led the case. They helped the foundation review its progress and performance over the prior three years and identified eight new opportunities to pursue.
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Legal/Risk
The Legal & Risk team advised on legal topics across geographies, drafted policies, offered guidance, and kept the teams informed of new regulations.
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Research & Data Services (RDS)
Researchers helped gather second- and third-party data so the case team could assess the client’s growth potential. This work substantially informed the case team’s understanding of environmental protection work, and the current trends.
Background
Mangrove forests cover just 0.1% of the planet’s surface but store up to 10 times more carbon per hectare than terrestrial forests. As such, they’re a critical lever in addressing climate change, and the Mangrove Conservation Foundation (MCF) was created to ensure their preservation.
Some years prior, Bain had helped the MCF’s previous board complete a strategy project. MCF had been implementing that strategy ever since, and had conducted an internet fundraising project, also with Bain’s help. (Bain’s marketing experts successfully applied their digital and ecommerce toolkit to this nonprofit setting.)
Thanks to this mutual history, MCF reengaged Bain for a full strategy refresh. In the years since, new opportunities had arisen, like the fact that the International Convention on Wetlands picked Shenzen, China as a hub. This was an opportunity for MCF to play a more significant role on the world stage. MCF’s board called upon Bain to help determine their future direction and create a plan toward their two-year fundraising goal of 50 million RMB per year for the next two years.
The plan
The Bain team started by reviewing how the prior projects and their implementations had performed, as well as the finances of the overall organization. They identified a few key issues and conducted two workshops to help the board better allocate its current resources.
Both teams discovered that the foundation's current fundraising strategy wasn’t sustainable. It had seen intermittent success but was unlikely to provide the recurring donation flow to help them reach their $50 million goal, much less increase the scope of their preservation. They also found that projects were being run in the right spirit, but sometimes lacked clear goals or proper financial management.
To take advantage of the Shenzen hub opportunity, MCF would need a new fundraising model that could work with their current limited resources, and greater rigor around how they managed and delivered projects.
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How had MCF executed on the strategy over the past three years?
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What were MCF’s core accomplishments and internal challenges?
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What new opportunities could accelerate the foundation’s growth?
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How could MCF capture these opportunities?
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What key themes should the foundation focus on?
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What core competencies would they need?
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What core principles should they adhere to?
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How could MCF optimize its decision-making agenda and inputs for key decisions?
The approach
Bain used global benchmarks and case studies from its research team to inspire MCF leadership on how to best leverage emerging opportunities such as the Shenzen hub. They also demonstrated how MCF could achieve more by growing into a global mangrove foundation, rather than just a China-focused one, and unlock more funding.
As part of this strategy review, Bain teams presented feedback they’d collected on the organization’s governance and strategy and explored potential partnership models that top nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) followed around the world. Bain teams analyzed the source and destination of the foundation’s funds as well as the likelihood that those funds would reoccur, assessed existing projects for vision and strategic focus, and outlined the core competencies the organization would need. They presented all the findings as a new strategy to define MCF’s future.
Both teams held three workshops which led to eight decisions covering three main topics: a strategy review, a strategy upgrade, and improved models for governance and operations.
The results
The chairman loved the results and MCF is now implementing the eight findings, including the partnership model with the International Mangrove Center’s new Shenzen hub. The work has already strengthened the client’s governance and operating model and provided a clear decision-making agenda, as well as clear inputs for key decisions.
projects identified for the client to work on
strategy workshops
