Censeo Consulting Group
Type of Work: Pro Bono
Client: Higher Achievement
Lynsey Jeffries, CEO of Higher Achievement, likes to say that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. That's where Higher Achievement comes in. It aims to close the opportunity gap during pivotal middle school years.
By leveraging the power of communities—currently Washington DC Metro, Baltimore, Richmond and Pittsburgh—Higher Achievement provides a year-round learning environment, role models, and a culture of high expectations, resulting in college-bound scholars with the character, confidence, and skills to succeed.
And Higher Achievement makes a measurable impact on test scores, grades, social skills, and long-term success. Some 75 percent of Higher Achievement students improve their grade point average by at least one letter grade, and 96 percent graduate from high school—double the rate of their peers. And, 75 percent graduate from college—four times the rate of their peers.
And Censeo Consulting Group is making a measurable impact on Higher Achievement. The firm "proactively seeks out pro bono opportunities where we can strengthen the capacity of non-profit and educational organizations to deliver more impact for their local communities," says Raj Sharma, founder and CEO of Censeo Consulting Group. "Our relationship with Higher Achievement is the hallmark of our community service program and signifies our commitment to improving public education."
Censeo has contributed over $300,000 in pro-bono consulting to Higher Achievement, specifically helping the organization develop a financial model to enable its growth strategy and help monitor costs against student performance.
During Higher Achievement's expansion between 2009 and 2012, cost efficiency was a significant challenge to sustainable growth, Jeffries says. Back-office and direct-service costs grew faster than the number of students served, and in 2011 the cost per student was more than $9,000. With Censeo's help, and new monthly dashboards, that number has dropped to $3,903 per student.
"It has really changed our management practices on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis and also has saved our staff at least six weeks of time and data crunching of things that we always had to do more manually," Jeffries says. "Censeo came in and asked all the right questions, challenged our assumptions, leveraged all of its experience and technical expertise to help us solve a problem. As a result, we are so much more powerful and efficient than ever before. I've worked with a lot of firms throughout my 14 years at Higher Achievement, and for us this relationship with Censeo is transformational, not transactional. Censeo has fundamentally changed the way we operate."
The success of the model emboldened our relationship with Higher Achievement, inspiring more of Censeo's staff to begin mentoring, expanding our role as a trusted advisor, and enabling our firm to develop deeper insights into K-12 public education, especially in local communities, Sharma says.
The impact part of this organization and its mission is what sold me," says Sharma, who currently serves on Higher Achievement's Board of Directors. "Just meeting some of the scholars that Higher Achievement works with and hearing them and how they carry themselves just made it a no brainer for me to work with the team at Higher Achievement."
And Sharma says he was "thrilled" to be able to have Censeo involved. "We have an education practice and we fundamentally believe that that's one of the best ways to realize true potential, so just looking at what Higher Achievement does and stands for, to us, was very inspiring and aligns completely with our mission."
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