Social Sector Solutions provides professional management consultations to help social sector clients succeed with strategic and entrepreneurial ventures. Offered by the Center for Social Sector Leadership at the UC Berkeley-Haas School of Business in partnership with McKinsey & Company.
Our Track Record
- Study the market and competitors, choose optimal product/service design and agree on a go-to-market plan.
- Client reference: CommonApp consultation improves the transfer pathway for students between community college and a 4-year school, in service of CommonApp’s goal to increase access and equity to college.
Click here to visit CommonApp’s blog about our work
“I’ve worked with many elite consulting firms over the years on numerous projects, and this team of MBA students from Berkeley topped them all in terms of their clear passion to help the underserved, lack of ego and the ultimate product they produced in a very compressed period of time.”
– Don Yu, Chief Operating Officer at Reach Higher, and Senior Director of Equity & Access at the Common Application, Inc.
“Way to go! Your work on this project has provided us with incredible depth of research and information. This report is impressive, robust, thoughtful, creative, and actionable the results of which will make a difference for thousands of students. Thank you!”
– Jenny Rickard, President and CEO at the Common Application, Inc.
Other S3 projects completed: business plan for a new advisory service, strategy for an inner city urban development, feasibility study for a new business venture, updated product, expansion regionally, nationally and globally.
- Develop impact models and communications tools
- Client reference: Safe & Sound, SF calculates the economic cost of child abuse in the San Francisco Bay Area to be $2 billion a year, with child abuse reports every nine minutes.
Click here to visit the study from Safe & Sound
“The Economics of Child Abuse: A Study of San Francisco, originally published in 2016 in partnership with S3, has expanded its reach and impact throughout the state, with 30 counties and the State of California having a report and using the data. Let me just say that our partnership has been profound.”
– Katie Albright, CEO of Safe & Sound
Other S3 projects completed: case for insurance coverage for respite care for families with terminally ill children, metrics for a social enterprise.
- Assess current state, identify and evaluate opportunities, create implementation plan.
- Client reference: Acumen – feasibility student supported new market entry into US market.
“Thank you all for your tremendous contributions over the last several months. You’ve taken an area of huge strategic importance, scoped it down to an addressable need, and provided valuable and actionable recommendations to our team. Everyone on the Acumen team has been impressed with your thoughtfulness and professionalism throughout this project.”
– Amon Anderson, Director at Acumen America
Other S3 completed projects: design retention and equity plans for employees of legal aid organization, growth and diversity plan for private high school, national growth plan for social enterprise, growth plan for large wine and music festival, national expansion plan for education leadership program, audience diversity plan for performing arts organization, university diversity analysis.
- Assess current business model, present diverse options, prepare business plan.
- Client reference: CoolClimate Network now has a membership model to bring in $600k a year.
Chris Jones, Director at CoolClimate Network
Other S3 completed projects: membership model for a climate change organization, summer financial plan for a housing project, earned revenue plan for an arts center and a science museum, sustainability for a foundation-run regional dental program, revenue-generating executive education program, strategic plan for a multigenerational family service center, business plan for a women’s sports organization, financial model for a union of 20 graduate schools of religion.
- Deeply understand the customer/client, design a plan to meet their needs and aspirations, develop an outreach plan.
- Client reference: Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy’s Institute of the Golden Gate’s start-up marketing plan to fill reservations for a new facility upon opening with environmentally-focused organizations.
“S3 was critical in helping us launch the Institute at the Golden Gate. The program’s top quality leadership and consultants helped define a market strategy, pinpoint critical early clients, and launch this critical organization with dramatic early success.”
– Cleveland Justis, Former director and co-founder of Institute at the Golden Gate, Principal at Potrero Group, and Trustee and former chair at Marin Community Foundation
Other S3 completed projects: marketing plan to increase uptake of veterans’ benefits, digital strategy for an ethnic museum.
- Assess market, create theory of change, determine top priorities, develop strategic plan.
- Client reference: Berkeley Food Network has a startup business plan for a new community-based organization that coordinates the distribution of food and related programming to hunger relief organizations throughout the city of Berkeley.
“Our experience with the Haas S3 program exceeded our expectations! The team was very professional and the business plan they wrote for us was thorough and actionable. Now, with the COVID-19 shelter-in-place crisis, our business plan has served as a roadmap for ramping up our services to meet unprecedented need in our community.”
Sara Webber, Co-Founder and Executive Director at the Berkeley Food Network
Other S3 completed projects: start-up for new philanthropy, strategic plan for ethnic-specific foundation, strategic planning for family and children’s services organization.
- Identify operational challenges, improve/update operations (land use, technology, talent development) and create implementation plan.
- Client reference: San Quentin News has an operational plan to distribute their newspaper–entirely written by the incarcerated–to prisoners throughout California.
– Arnulfo Timoteo Garcia, Former Editor at San Quentin News
“We had a great experience and learned a lot. The team came back with some terrific recommendations. (And just to let you know that your work is not in vain) we did go on to raise more than 400,000 dollars in additional funding and staff an additional position as a direct result of the engagement that we had and the information that we were then able to use towards fundraising.”
– Leigh Phillips, Former Director at the SF Office of Financial Empowerment
Other S3 completed projects: improve trails in parks, increase update on kindergartners college savings funds, assess operations of food delivery service, improve global distribution plan for prosthetics, design membership plan, restructure prize competition.
Congratulations to Our 2021 Clients
Why This Works
Our amazing talented and dedicated students work in teams that commit 900 hours to the client and the project. Students are MBAs and students from public health, public policy, social welfare, development practice, education, urban planning and beyond. Each team is composed of a diverse group formed to answer the client question.
A tried and true approach which we follow rigorously based on best professional management consulting practices from top consulting firm McKinsey & Company. The teams are co-taught by Paul Jansen, Director Emeritus, McKinsey and Adjunct Professor; Nora Silver, Founder and Faculty Director, Haas’ Center for Social Sector Leadership and Adjunct Professor; and Joe Dougherty, Partner, Dalberg Advisors and Lecturer. Instructors meet and work with teams each week and help teams follow the process we know produces top results.
The partnership with world-class consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, which brings its expertise and its skilled McKinsey consultants to coach every S3 team.