Today we’d like to introduce you to Umair Hussain.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My journey with pro bono organization, Pivot Nonprofit Consulting (Pivot), was the culmination of so many stories and experiences, all echoing a poignant phrase that the comic book loving nerd inside of me recalls often: “with great privilege comes great responsibility.”
Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I would spend summers traveling, often witnessing the stark socioeconomic contrast of my own upbringing in the suburbs of Chicago (Long Grove) to the daily experiences of many globally. Each incremental year of exposure accumulated to reinforce small actions – volunteer trips in high school, summer mentorships at The Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago while in college, and supporting my mother, a physician, as she donated her time to a free medical clinic she helped to develop. But it was not until I came out of college, first in finance, followed by management consulting, with a demanding professional schedule, that I realized that I had a longing to satiate my inner social impact bug.
Enter Pivot.
While I had heard of Pro Bono endeavors in medicine and law, the concept was less obvious in the world of business.
A group of young professionals, including the founder Paul Grana, founded Pivot in 2005 to pool the skills of those in consulting, finance, and related fields to provide a 100% pro bono platform to advise local 501(c)3s across a range of common issues — strategy, fundraising, marketing, and impact KPIs.
A friend mentioned that I should explore Pivot and put me in touch with the local Chicago Chapter President. After a series of interviews, I was onboard and assigned to my first project, with a great ACT prep non-profit, Griffith Tutoring. The experience was my first taste of pro bono. In short, the concept had me hooked and was immensely energizing and fulfilling.
That was 7 years ago. Since that first project, I grew within the organization and was appointed Chicago Chapter President in 2014 and as of 2016, became the President and CEO of the organization at large. Since taking on the leadership role, I have worked with our leadership to scale our client impact, volunteer base, and innovated a new service to become a premier provider of Board of Director Retreats focused on strategic planning – all still volunteer-driven and fully pro bono.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It certainly has been a journey, both for the organization and for me personally as I took the helm. As a volunteer-driven organization, the impact and viability of the organization are centered on the quality of our professionals. As with other consulting groups, we have people, process, and organizational issues and challenges – but with the extra dimension of being pro bono and volunteers with demanding careers. To address the quality of our consulting team, I’ve worked with my colleagues, our Chief People Officer and Executive Chairman, to institutionalize expectations, roles, and processes. While it has been a patient, evolutionary process, I can confidently say that our volunteer consultants include genuinely exceptional talent that I am fortunate to be working with.
Additionally, as is the case for many of our volunteers, I too have a demanding professional career as an Associate Principal at Red Chalk Group (a management consulting boutique focused on growth strategy, disruptive technologies, and investment decisions) – yet many lessons, frameworks, and client issues that I have gained from my tenure in consulting at Red Chalk Group are actively incorporated into our team, process, and client-delivery at Pivot Nonprofit Consulting, which is very aligned with the original intent of harnessing the backgrounds of professional management consultants.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Pivot Nonprofit Consulting – what should we know?
The official version: Pivot Nonprofit Consulting (“Pivot”), a 501(c)3, is a volunteer-driven, pro bono organization comprised of business professionals devoted to enhancing the capacity of local 501(c)3s to create social impact. We operate through two virtual offices: Chicago and Boston. I am particularly proud of the scale and scope of our impact – few institutions are 100% focused on pro bono, a delivery model that is team-based, and comprised of a group of professionals with unique skills while having the needed empathy to be emotionally invested in the mission-driven outcomes of non-profit organizations.
Over the past decade, Pivot Nonprofit Consulting has donated over $2 million of social value, 20,000+ volunteer hours, has an active 40+ volunteer base across Chicago and Boston, and has served as a strategic counselor to over 50 clients since its inception. Clients include EDs from large, mature non-profits with global or national presence to smaller, local, recently chartered non-profits.
Issues that we are engaged on Board of Director Retreats and Strategy Development (and a variety of related issues across finance, marketing, and organization).
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
As personal inspirations, both my mother and mother-in-law are physicians that have spent decades investing in charitable or pro bono projects, often centered on improving medical access – the lessons of balancing profession with social causes (without asking for even simple recognition) have been etched in my mind and heart.
More directly at Pivot, our exceptional volunteer consultant staff deserve overwhelming credit. The dedication of each volunteer, who is juggling a career, personal life, and Pivot, is simply admirable.
Additionally, key members that have shaped the growth trajectory span back to my early years with Pivot include Paul Grana (Founder), Michael Huang (former Chicago President) and Tae Lee (former Chicago President).
More recently, my colleagues, Shyaam Ramkumar (Executive Chairman) and Mike Schiro (Chief People Officer) have been key partners in further institutionalizing Pivot – Mike, in particular, has been an exceptional partner for the development of the framework of our BoD Retreat offering, ramping up our skill set, and refining our vision of people, process, and organization. Together, Shyaam, Mike and I worked on an internal strategy to evolve Pivot so that we could better serve organizations at the most strategic level (the Board and ED), with a “top-down” approach, and Mike leveraged his past learnings from the education sector, non-profit domain, and graduate training experiences (in leadership and organizational change) to fill in critical gaps related to executive facilitation, change management, and organizational theory. Personally, I have learned a tremendous amount about teamwork and change management in a unique setting – a pro bono organization – from my work with my colleagues at Pivot.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.pivotconsulting.org/
- Email: contact@pivotconsulting.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PivotNonprofitConsulting/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/PivotConsulting
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