Foundations and philanthropic organizations have resources, visibility, and mission clarity that most organizations would envy. What they rarely have is honest signal. When your core activity is deploying capital in service of a mission, the feedback loops that tell a business how well it’s actually working are absent or muted. Grantees need your money. Co-funders need your alignment. Board members need your narrative. The incentives all point toward telling you things are going well.
That makes the strategic questions harder, not easier. How an organization positions its investment thesis, how it communicates impact, how it builds internal systems that surface real information instead of confirming existing assumptions—these become genuinely difficult problems, which don’t yield to good intentions or bigger budgets alone.
Doing this work well means bringing strategic rigor that cuts through low-signal environments—not just to sharpen external impact, but to re-energize the internal culture. When people inside an organization can see precisely how their work connects to real outcomes, the clarity compounds. External impact and internal momentum start fueling each other.
We work extensively in the social sector, and unusually with venture capital and financial services as well—which sharpens everything we do at the intersection of money and meaning.
Clients: Omidyar Network, Clinton Foundation, Community Vision, GlobalGiving, Linux Foundation Energy
“Mark is brilliant — on so many levels. He brings a deep understanding of the landscape and forces driving the many segments across the technology industry, as well as the nonprofit and government sectors, making him a strategic partner with a broad set of reference points. The project he led for me became a collaboration that transformed the strategy of the organization I represented and foretold broader movements in the industry. The work we did together continues to be a defining moment of my career.”
