Social Impact Consulting

A project life cycle can be broadly defined as the following steps.

1) Identify Client 2) Recruit Team 3) Implement Project 4) Wrap up Imagine you’re a composer with 4 record players in front of you. You put on one record with just drum sounds, 2 minutes later, you add the trumpet record, then the saxophone record, then some tambourine. Once the drum record is finished, soon after you put the tambourine on, you start a new drum record. Any time a record finishes, you replace it with a record of the same type, but maybe a different beat. Projects work with a similar rotational life cycle.

1) Identify Client 2) Recruit Team 3) Implement Project 4) Wrap up.

We call this a cycle because once step 4 is complete, your team is ready to take on a new project and start the cycle over again.

During GIVE’s Pilot Phase, we worked off a model where multiple projects started each step at the same time. Even if one project’s step 2 ended late, the other projects would stall and wait before collectively moving onto step 3. While we were able to complete our projects successfully we found that this model limited opportunities to get involved with GIVE; people and projects had to wait a whole year to reapply. We realized that the excitement about GIVE and desire to involve more team members could not wait out this 12 month time-period. So, our new plan makes individual life cycles for each project, instead of GIVE as a whole. As soon as GIVE obtains a client to work with, the project’s 4 step — above mentioned — cycle begins! This project kicks off regardless of any other project’s timeline. We continue this until we have 4–5 projects occurring at one time. As soon as one of those 4–5 projects end, a member of the GIVE Team is ready to introduce another client and potential project. This way we constantly engage 4–5 projects at all times and decrease any waiting time.

This lifecycle developed as a ‘lesson learned’ after our Pilot Phase. We looked for ‘even better ifs’, developed and strategized internally, and created best practices. The project lifecycle model increases the number of projects and practitioners that GIVE can engage; benefiting both parties and demonstrating one example of GIVE’s development as a Social Impact Consulting organization. We are excited to continue to share our knowledge and expertise while helping non-profit organizations achieve their missions.