Time For Lyme Teams With Harvard Business School Alumni

GREENWICH — Not-for-profit organizations are taking a page from the for-profit world by striving to run their foundations and charities like businesses. Nowhere is that trend more evident than in Connecticut, where Time For Lyme, Inc (TFL) partnered recently with Harvard Business School Club of Connecticut Community Partners to examine best practices and accountability, design a new organizational structure, and create a “charitable business” that will bring TFL’s message well beyond its current dimensions.

“We started Time For Lyme ten years ago as a group of moms trying to help our kids who were sick with Lyme disease,” said Diane Blanchard, co-chair and co-founder of Time For Lyme, a research, education, and advocacy group. Since 1998, TFL has raised more than $4 million, developed a school curriculum, lobbied for federal funding for Lyme disease research, education and prevention, and acted as an information clearinghouse. Along with the Lyme Disease Association, it also established the country’s first endowed research center dedicated to finding a gold standard test and cure for tick-borne diseases, the Columbia University Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases Center, which opened in April 2007.

“Because of our tremendous success we’ve gotten too big to run from our home offices and we knew it was time to expand and grow to the next level,” Ms Blanchard said. “That’s where Harvard Business School Connecticut Community Partners came in. They offered to help us take the next giant step as an organization poised for sustainable growth.”

Through its pro bono consulting services, HBS Connecticut Community Partners works with nonprofits to identify ways to achieve greater results.

“That means keeping the passion, dedication, and success of these grassroots organizations and helping them create accountability, improve management and define a structure to take best advantage of their strengths,” said Nancy Tafoya, Community Partners team member and managing partner with Solutions in Practice, LLC, a consulting firm in Connecticut. “That may mean hiring staff, defining roles, taking accountability for results, etc. In the case of Time For Lyme, we partnered with a very successful organization to confirm their strategic goals, identify industry best practices, and suggest structural parameters for volunteers as well as paid staff.

“Nonprofits that achieve the greatest success are those that are run like a business and incorporate the passion of their creators,” Ms Tafoya added. “In recent years, we have seen many more charitable groups recognize the need to define and use outcome metrics, creating the concept of a ‘charitable business’ which combines the strengths of various stakeholders to succeed in reaching the organization’s mission.”

The work between TFL and Community Partners took place from May through November 2008. According to TFL, Time For Lyme will begin to implement the Harvard recommendations including hiring a paid executive director and other executive management, creating a Scientific Advisory Committee and creating impactful brand messaging.

The HBS Club of Connecticut Community Partners (www.hbsconnecticut.org) was established in 2004 by the Harvard Business School Club of Connecticut to provide alumni the opportunity to apply their business and management skills as volunteer consultants working on challenging and worthwhile projects in the nonprofit sector. Since the formation of Community Partners as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity, the organization has delivered more than $3 million in pro bono consulting services to leading nonprofits in the state of Connecticut.