Capacity building is an integral part of this process. Capacity building enables nonprofit organizations and their leaders to develop strategies and organizational strengths that can make them more effective and sustainable, thus allowing them to increase the living standards of the more vulnerable populations to which they cater and to better address some of most intractable contemporary social and environmental problems.
Students worked in four different consultancy teams – covering operations, development, communications and project management respectively – to produce a strategy for Ithaca Laundry. These teams set up their own scope of work and organized project deliverables before, during and after the trip, meaning the project was organized very similarly to a real-world management consulting engagement. They delivered their final strategies and the frameworks they developed to Ithaca Laundry’s management and staff in a meeting following the study trip as part of their final exam.
