Case Studies

Build Error-Free Scalability

Situation

It was one of their worst nightmares. This community foundation made several payments from the wrong donor accounts. With their recent growth, the foundation’s double checks failed. It was ugly when the foundation explained this to the donor. It was even uglier when they shared the situation with their Board.

The community foundation employees tried to improve the results by layering on more double checks. Errors were reduced, but these changes took more time. They resulted in delivering slower to their donors and grantees, more overtime, increased costs, and reduced capacity to serve donors and the community.

How could this community foundation deliver error-free results while growing?

Solution

This community foundation engaged Lee Kuntz to help them understand and solve the issue. Lee assessed the situation, provided answers, and recommended a customized process improvement plan to solve their pain.

As part of the roadmap to success, Lee trained employees in on four-hour meeting to effectively use process improvement to create scalable, error-free results. Through a three-day coached deep dive, employees identified causes and solutions. Lee then trained the employees on process ownership and coached the team to lock in the new results. The training and coaching were delivered on time and on budget.

Results

This foundation recaptured 20% of their time and the process has been error-free for three years. The chief financial officer said, “Lee’s help was transformational. The team now proactively owns the process and gets consistent results.” To achieve these results ongoing, the foundation trains all employees in process improvement. Each process improvement project recaptures time, reduces error risk – delivering faster and better to donors and grantees.