MDI Consulting

MDI Consulting is proud to be involved in an important new collaborative intended to strengthen the non profit community — COMMON BOND. 

The purpose of COMMON BOND is to improve the ability of the sector to work together to achieve common social, economic, and political goals. Deliberate and strategic coordination among a group of nonprofits results in better social  and economic outcomes than nonprofits could achieve in isolation from one another. With the growing number of nonprofits in the US — the nonprofit sector has doubled in the past 25 years, with 28,000 nonprofit organizations in NJ alone — decreases in public funding, and pressure on limited private sources of funding, collaborative solutions will be increasingly required and are emerging as best practices for nonprofits. 

Collaboration is challenging, sometimes difficult, time consuming and often frustrating. It requires new skills that often are not in the toolbox of many nonprofit executives and staff. In particular, nonprofit executives struggle with relational issues that arise during collaboration. In addition, the technical assistance that is available to most nonprofits is at the individual organizational level rather than at the collaboration (i.e., inter-organizational) level. There is an important opportunity to identify the types of technical assistance needed by collaborations, and, more specifically, the sequencing and timing of these interventions to build the political will to create new partnerships. 

COMMON BOND exists to provide the missing link: technical and strategic assistance at the collaboration level.

Tonia Papke is joining together with Barbara Heisler Williams and Bob Zdenek of Integral Inc. and Audrey Winkler  of OMG Consulting in this important work. 

This collaboration among seasoned consultants provides a unique set of combined skills in board development, financial management, operations and human resource strategies and expert knowledge of the key processes involved in collaborations and mergers to clients in one place.