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Strategic Solutions Project
Project Background
Strategic Solutions was a collaborative effort of The
James Irvine Foundation, The
David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and La
Piana Associates.
In 1996, the Irvine Foundation — sensing an increased interest
among nonprofit sector leaders in partnership opportunities — commissioned
a study by David La Piana of the future role of strategic restructuring.
This study, published as Beyond
Collaboration in 1997, led to a planning grant to explore
ways in which funders could be useful in increasing the strategic restructuring
skill level of nonprofit leaders. The Irvine Foundation was joined in this
effort by the Packard Foundation.
The planning grant led to a strategic work plan for the development of
the Strategic Solutions project for 1998-2003. The project implementation
was funded jointly by Irvine , Packard, and the Hewlett Foundation through "expenditure
responsibility" grants to La Piana Associates, a private consulting
firm founded by David La Piana to work with nonprofit organizations on
a range of strategic issues. Continuation funding was provided by the Packard
Foundation to fund the Strategic Solutions website through summer 2004.
Since the project involved expenditure responsibility grants to a private
consulting firm, there was no board of directors in the usual sense. Instead,
the project had an Advisory Board, composed of senior staff from each of
the three funders, and an independent evaluation consultant hired to track
the long-term impact of the project. The role of the Advisory Board was
to provide both oversight of the expenditure responsibility grants, and
advice and reflection for the project as it unfolded. This governance structure
represented a true partnership and an unusual model for carrying out an
organizational effectiveness project.
David La Piana is the founder and President of La Piana
Associates, and his work is at the core of the Strategic Solutions project.
David first became known as the Bay Area's "merger guru" in the
early 1990's after leading his agency, the East Bay Agency for Children,
through three mergers. In 1994, the National Center for Nonprofit Boards
(now BoardSource) published his report, Nonprofit Mergers: The Board's
Responsibility to Consider the Unthinkable, as part of their Strategic
Issue Series. David was then approached in 1997 by the Irvine Foundation
to write Beyond Collaboration, in which he coined the term "strategic
restructuring" to refer to the continuum of partnership configurations — including
(but not limited to) mergers, joint ventures, administrative consolidations,
and joint programming — through which nonprofits attempt to anticipate
or respond to environmental threats and opportunities. This report led
to the development of the Strategic Solutions project.
David La Piana has now worked on over 65 mergers with more than 200 organizations
nationwide, as well as on dozens of other cases of strategic restructuring.
Through Strategic Solutions, David has authored The Nonprofit Mergers
Workbook: The Leader’s Guide to Considering, Negotiating, and Executing
a Merger (2000), and co-authored The Nonprofit Mergers Workbook
Part II: Unifying the Organization after a Merger (2004) and Strategic
Restructuring for Nonprofit Organizations: Mergers, Integrations, and Alliances (2004).
He was also commissioned by the Ford Foundation to write Real Collaboration:
A Guide for Grantmakers (2001), and has authored numerous other articles
and reports.
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