Pro Bono Work

L.E.K. Sydney’s community engagement committee helped KTF (formerly the Kokoda Track Foundation), which works with people and communities to improve the lives, livelihoods and futures of Papua New Guineans, by reviewing its past performance and existing governance and formulating a five-year strategy along with a supporting implementation plan. And the L.E.K. Sydney team continues to support KTF, such as by helping it analyze survey data related to a new teaching campus in the rural Balimo region to develop a thorough understanding of existing teaching resources, abilities, needs and demographics. L.E.K. also developed a model of future demand for the Balimo campus to help inform campus development and programming.

The San Francisco-based Zen Caregiving Project is a pioneer in “contemplative care,” which takes a meditative and mindful approach to end-of-life, providing high-touch, compassionate and judgment-free care to patients. L.E.K. assisted the non-profit, then known as the Zen Hospice Project, in evaluating strategic options for sustainable and impactful growth, ensuring the organization was well-positioned to achieve increased revenue and scale, and to extend its reach and mission. The engagement earned L.E.K. its first-ever Excellence in Social & Community Investment award from Consulting magazine.

L.E.K. assisted Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF), whose goal is to eliminate Parkinson’s disease in our lifetime, with outlining key use cases for wearables/mobile technologies, primarily in clinical development, and assembled an indicative landscape of such technologies across that use case. The L.E.K. team developed a framework to outline the key attributes and tradeoffs involved in a technology investment decision for MJFF and prepared a questionnaire for the organization to use in its evaluation of the technologies. The work earned L.E.K Consulting magazine’s 2017 Excellence in Social & Community Investment award.

L.E.K. Paris worked with Les Restos du Coeur, which delivers food to those in need, to analyze and optimize its network of distributions centers, which totals in the thousands. Using data and analytics tools, the Paris L.E.K. team looked at the network’s existing footprint and identified areas for the organization to open new branches where they would be most relevant. The Paris office continues to provide the organization with operational support on an ongoing basis. 

L.E.K. helped the Bay Area Global Health Alliance, a life sciences/healthcare non-profit, develop a strategic roadmap for its first year of operation, including how to structure the organization and find topics that would attract the greatest participation. L.E.K. developed a tactical roadmap that went over the benefits of 501c3 status, provided a list of potential organizations for the organization to partner with as it scaled, as well as a financial forecast outlining the funding required for it to succeed in the long run. Additionally, L.E.K. conducted benchmarking to other global health alliances, including looking at the funding, membership and activities of those groups. Not only was L.E.K. granted "Founding Member" status to the alliance, but it was also asked to continue weighing in on strategic direction in an advisory role going forward.

Following the bushfires that ravaged 5.3 million hectares of New South Wales, Australia during its summer season of 2019-20, WIRES, which has helped with the rescue and rehabilitation of native fauna in the state for more 35 years, commissioned L.E.K. Sydney to develop a 5-year growth strategy laying out how the non-profit could leverage its strengths to deliver greater impact and more beneficial outcomes. The L.EK. office in Sydney also defined a future operating and governance model for WIRES that would enable it to function more effectively. After extensively workshopping the recommendations with both the organization’s board and executive team, many of the key recommendations were or are in the process of being implemented by WIRES.

L.E.K. Boston helped Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a world leader in adult and pediatric cancer treatment and research, develop a strategy to maximize the potential of its holiday merchandising program to create a stable recurring income stream. The recommendations made by L.E.K. were estimated to increase program revenue levels and net contributions by some 7-8 times, providing critical ongoing support to the organization. 

New York City-based Saving Mothers, which provides supplies, training, and direct medical care in Guatemala, Kenya, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. to reduce maternal deaths during childbirth, wanted to launch a line of commercial products to help fund the non-profit. To understand both the need and opportunity in the marketplace, L.E.K. launched a consumer survey and spoke to hospital purchasers, as well as potential customers. It also mapped out the potential around price points, revenue and partnership opportunities to help the organization target its efforts.

Life Science Cares (LSC), a collective of life science companies and industry leaders that partners with local organizations working to alleviate poverty in Boston, Philadelphia, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area, asked L.E.K. to help develop a 5-year strategic plan to ensure the organization’s sustainability and growth. Factors included determining the optimal business model to increase donations and drive sustainability, defining metrics to enhance LSC’s management, identifying organizational scale-up goals and requirements, and better understanding the optimal model for cultivating and filling ongoing volunteer opportunities.

San Francisco-based New Story asked L.E.K. to help it find a city in Mexico where it could eradicate homelessness. After identifying the main drivers of homelessness in the country and the key capabilities needed for an organization looking to become a central project owner there, L.E.K. presented the non-profit with a list of 3-5 cities complete with supporting regional information, as well as a list of potential partners and relevant case studies. Using that information, L.E.K. and New Story held a workshop to discuss city needs, the organization's capabilities, and the various ways it could have the greatest impact.

L.E.K. helped Rare, which creates behavioral change campaigns to incentivize sustainable behaviors, develop its corporate and community toolkits to support its Make It Personal campaign in the U.S., which targets seven sustainable behaviors, from adopting a plant-based diet to becoming politically engaged. After conducting interviews and surveying both corporate decision makers and consumers, L.E.K. presented the Arlington, Va.-based non-profit with a host of findings that it could use to encourage behavior change along those dimensions through a corporate "green benefits package" as well as through grassroots community efforts with municipality partners.

Fort Worth, Tex.-based Rainwater Charitable Foundation (RCF), a private family foundation whose original mission was to provide educational grants to children, was expanding its focus to include treatment development for tauopathies, a class of neurodegenerative diseases that includes Alzheimer's. To support this new focus, RCF established the Tau Consortium, for which L.E.K. assessed analog foundation approaches and developed strategic recommendations for its translational research strategy, including near-term approaches that could be achieved with the organization’s then-current budget as well as recommendations for longer-term options that required expanded capacity and resources.

L.E.K. helped the Boston-based performing arts non-profit BOCH Center better understand the Millennial generation to aid with its fundraising efforts. L.E.K. conducted a combination of primary and secondary research focused on this cohort, including an interview campaign, a survey, peer program benchmarking as well as general secondary research. It presented BOCH with three key recommendations to increasing Millennial engagement, membership, and ticket sales.