The Tamer Center’s Nonprofit Board Leadership Program has provided countless Columbia Business School students the opportunity to collaborate with and gain exposure to nonprofit organizations over the past 15 years. Continuing its legacy of success and allowing for future innovation, however, required institutionalizing the program’s knowledge capital and processes. My project was to develop an overall program governance guide with supporting templates and processes to seamlessly manage NBLP through constantly transitioning student leadership teams. Moreover, I was tasked with identifying the participating nonprofit organizations for the 2022-23 cohort by leveraging past relationships and sourcing new ones with nonprofits across the city. By the end of the summer, I developed 70+ tools, templates, and resources to aid NBLP facilitation, and communicated with over 80 potential nonprofit partners across the city. Overall, these tools and processes will enable a smooth, consistent program which can be built upon in future years, deepening ties between Columbia and the nonprofit community.

My work demanded a healthy balance of technical/soft skills and a requisite knowledge of the nonprofit industry, all of which were relied upon my experiences at Columbia Business School. I leveraged technical skills to develop a model to optimize student application review and matching with nonprofits, and I leaned upon learnings from classes like High Performing Nonprofits and Business Strategies & Solving Social Problems to effectively communicate with and recruit nonprofit partners.

One key challenge I faced was being inundated with 15 years of data from past NBLP cohorts. Standardizing past data and synthesizing it into meaningful outputs that can be leveraged throughout the future required thoughtfully considering how to repurpose past information and consider future opportunities that hadn’t been explored. Some examples include the type of information that is captured on student and nonprofit applications to allow for more fruitful and harmonious matches, and better reporting on outcomes from the program. Another key challenge was collaborating with so many potential nonprofit partners. Emails, phone calls, and Zoom sessions with nearly 80+ nonprofit executives and board members requires constant attention and responsiveness.

Overall, I was extremely pleased with my experience working with the NBLP. The nonprofit sector plays such a pivotal role in addressing some of the gaps where private sector and government solutions fail to take hold. Getting exposure to so many amazing organizations across an eclectic range of programmatic areas was truly rewarding. Ultimately, I was happy to apply my skillset towards a meaningful organization that will hopefully allow them to scale and innovate in future cohorts.