At the end of 2023, I joined The Smith Family, Australia’s largest children’s education charity, for a nonprofit fellowship (NPF). For four months, I was able to use my consulting skills honed at Oliver Wyman to make an impact at a national leading not-for-profit in an area I’m passionate about, while also improving my understanding of how not-for-profits operate.

The Smith Family supports more than 150,000 children and young people across Australia every year to overcome educational inequality caused by poverty. This is achieved through financial assistance for essentials like school uniforms and textbooks, support from a Family Partnership Coordinator who works closely with families to address educational barriers, and access to various short programs covering literacy, numeracy, career mentoring, and more.

During my fellowship with The Smith Family, I was embedded in the strategy team and also worked closely with the programs, policy, and operations teams. The fellowship primarily focused on two major projects: developing an organizational health dashboard using Power BI to track key business metrics and reviewing the short-course program suite for costing and scalability analysis. Working collaboratively alongside the strategy team and other key stakeholders, I interviewed stakeholders, structured prioritized problem-solving approaches, modelled costs in Excel, and analyzed data to form recommendations.

The benefit of a fellowship for not-for-profits is that they gain a free full-time team member to tackle a backlog of new projects and accelerate existing ones using consulting skills that may be less common within the organization. During my fellowship, a project assessing The Smith Family’s ability to hit its five-year growth targets became a priority for the executive team. My involvement enabled the strategy team to accelerate decision-making and provide a rigorous answer before a key executive meeting. This analysis influenced The Smith Family’s future growth plans, including the targets for student sponsorship into the future.

Being part of a welcoming and collaborative team made the experience enjoyable and inspiring. The passion everyone had for the mission was evident, and I learned a great deal about the for-purpose sector in a short time. Besides the impactful work, the fellowship was also fun, with lively social and team-building events including cultural events and birthday celebrations.

This fellowship has given me a chance to dip my toe into the world of not-for-profits in a way that wouldn’t be possible at most companies. Beyond the excitement of a new environment and working in an area I’m passionate about, it was also great to consolidate and test my consulting skills while reflecting on my career journey so far.