Showing Up for Tomorrow in San Diego and Nationwide
Skills-based volunteering in action at Booz Allen
For decades, Booz Allen’s award-winning San Diego office has helped clients like the U.S. Navy meet their toughest challenges. But this is just one way the firm has made itself a valuable part of the community.
Another example comes from the vibrant region of Southeast San Diego, which is strengthening its foundation for STEM education.
“As Southeast San Diego reinvents itself, we’re showing up with two things growing nonprofits desperately need: financial resources through our place-based grants and expertise in areas like strategy, operations, data, and technology,” says Booz Allen Foundation Executive Director Christine Hoisington.
Such capacity-building connections recently came to life during a skills-based volunteering marathon with the Taproot Foundation, an organization that connects nonprofits around the world to volunteers and support.
“Nonprofits started by giving Booz Allen volunteers a detailed description of what they needed to grow to the next level,” says Christine. “After two half-day marathons of intense and focused hands-on collaboration, our teams delivered detailed plans on how to make it happen for two very deserving organizations: MANA and the Elementary Institute of Science.”
Empowering a STEM Champion with a Technology Roadmap
MANA de San Diego provides girls and young women with training, mentorship, leadership development, and networking opportunities for modern careers. But MANA’s operations were still running on a 2010s-era tech stack.
Which systems should the organization purchase, upgrade, or replace, especially with such a tight budget? What capabilities do its employees need to use data in areas ranging from fundraising to service provision? Such specialized technology questions are hard to answer for a largely volunteer-run organization with just eight full-time employees.
That’s where Booz Allen’s in-depth expertise came in. “This is exactly the kind of project many of our employees do for a living, all day every day, for some of the nation’s largest public- and private-sector organizations,” says Christine.
Through the volunteering marathon, Booz Allen delivered a roadmap to MANA for prioritizing, investing in, and sunsetting infrastructure moving forward, with a focus on efficient, user-friendly systems that would grow with the organization.
Practical Next Steps for a Strategic Plan
The Elementary Institute of Science (EIS), which has supported budding engineers and scientists since the 1960s, had a detailed strategic plan for the 2020s. But this plan sat on the shelf for years as EIS employees tackled the day-to-day activities of STEM camps, internships, scholarships, and new programming in areas like AI.
Booz Allen San Diego employees have volunteered with the EIS community for years, helping with activities such as assembling student STEM kits, painting murals, and cleaning up creeks. The Taproot skills-based volunteering marathon took this partnership in yet another direction.
Drawing upon their considerable expertise and client experience, Booz Allen employees worked with EIS on practical ways to put its strategy into action. The plan included tangible, achievable KPIs and milestones as well as vital supporting work around culture, morale, and buy-in.
“Business strategy, strategic planning, agile methodology, and change management—these are all in a day’s work at Booz Allen,” says Christine. “Why not put them to use for our community partners, so these vital organizations can make an even bigger impact for the people they serve?”
Lasting Impact and Engagement
In addition to Southeast San Diego, Booz Allen and Taproot have implemented skills-based volunteering marathons to support nonprofits in Hawaii and the Washington, DC, area—and have seen encouraging results.
In a survey of leaders from six participating nonprofits, respondents reported that the program either met or exceeded their goals, and they anticipated seeing improvements in areas such as cost savings, time savings, increased organizational reach, and increased organizational effectiveness.
One participant called the marathon “so invaluable for nonprofits with limited expertise and budget.” Another cited the value of "working with an outside organization to get a fresh perspective,” along with “having access to skillsets we may not have internally at our organization (i.e., coding, API calling)."
Nonprofits appreciated the human connections of the volunteer marathons, as well. "The employees were really engaging and capable,” one reported. “They helped us identify a lot of gaps and ways to work together more effectively.”
Another marathon participant expressed the event’s value as follows: "Walking away with a very promising deliverable! And arriving at the product in collaboration with our Booz Allen volunteer team."
