What I Learned in the WISE Social Impact Consulting Fellowship

By Julia Westfall

This summer, I joined the WISE team as a Social Impact Consulting Fellow. This position taught me lessons both about the nonprofit sector and the importance of a supportive work environment. For context, I am a college student studying economics with a focus on access to education and healthcare. I am from a small town in upstate New York, and before coming to WISE I worked in a private practice doctors office and for a tiny nonprofit literacy center. Some of the lessons I took away from this summer seem obvious in retrospect, but each brought new clarity to the tumultuous but rewarding experience of working in social impact. 

understanding the Nonprofit sector

The first lesson of the summer came on day one, as my supervisor introduced me to the various websites and programs WISE uses to manage plans for its clients: grants are a big deal. When I first started working for the literacy center, everyone in the office was ecstatic because they had just been awarded a $5,000 government grant. It was the first grant they had received in years, which made sense because their small staff only applied to a handful each year. As we walked through the “grants pipeline” WISE puts together for each client, I began to understand that grants are a central revenue source for nonprofits, and not the once in a blue moon lottery I had once thought them to be. 

The second lesson came later, but was just as immediate. Before working at WISE, I subconsciously believed that non-profit status acted as a constraint that prevented organizations from growing very large. This belief came from the academic narrative that profit maximization is the only sustainable driver of organizational growth. The social imagery of all nonprofits being bare bones volunteer-run organizations that are always struggling to keep their head above water only exacerbated this belief. Through my research and meetings with WISE clients, I quickly saw first hand that nonprofit status did not prevent organizations from growing in scale to become massive. 

Navigating the complexities of philanthropy

While nonprofit status doesn’t cap growth, I also learned that it does create additional hoops to jump through. Executive directors have to please donors, while carrying out the requests of their board and operating in a way that funders will approve of. The July WISE book club read “Decolonizing Wealth” by Edgar Villanueva. This book prompted discussions about the role of foundations as “ivory towers” in philanthropy. Frequently, foundations include questions in their grant applications that cost the nonprofit time, money and energy without helping the communities they serve. Sometimes, these questions even harm those communities. Tracking some metrics– such as citizenship, sexual orientation, disability and religion– can at the least trigger distrust in community members and at worst put them in harm's way. In either scenario, doing so reduces the ability of a nonprofit to work with a community when that information was not necessary. Especially now, as the advent of artificial intelligence and increased digital surveillance has monetized data in a new and unpredictable way, there is an inherent threat for any vulnerable community or community member to turn personal information over to any organization, even one that is there to help them. Yet foundations continue to push for more and more specific metrics, allowing them to become yet another barrier to funding. 

Beyond pleasing donors, boards and foundations, nonprofits are also obliged to pander to nonsensical political preferences over choices as small as word choice. For example, one client I worked with this summer was told to change the wording in their grants to say “non-medical determinants of health” instead of “social determinants of health”. Another time, a client received feedback to remove the words “diversity” and “equity” from their grants going forward. Such rules are blatant punishments made on the basis of language despite the purported purpose of a funder to collaborate with nonprofits to help people together. Since nonprofits often cater to individuals and organizations with varying political beliefs, they must spend an inordinate amount of energy preemptively avoiding political faux pas instead of directing that energy to help people. 

Experiencing WISE’s Workplace Culture

I learned all of this and more while working at WISE this summer, and I am so grateful I had the opportunity to do so. The fellowship was thoroughly planned and organized, providing extensive training, an abundance of direct mentorship, a wide variety of experiences and opportunities to learn, and an unbelievably supportive team. When applying to this fellowship, I was skeptical whether WISE truly acted in accordance with its extensive social impact commitment. I anticipated the commitment may be an artifact from an old task force that had no desire to hold the company accountable to it. But I have been lucky enough to discover that the culture at WISE is deeply thoughtful and genuine in its pursuit of the ideals outlined in their commitment. 

This thoughtfulness was apparent in one on one interactions and internal and client-facing meetings, but it was most apparent in the all company monthly book club. Though I may eventually work in many companies over the course of my career, I know now that connecting intellectually with my coworkers is a priority for myself. 

Best of all, working at WISE has introduced me to dozens of nonprofits making tangible differences in their communities. While academics and news outlets can sometimes seem bogged down by academic, cynical, “that’s just how the world works” pessimism, these nonprofits are proof that there are so many people out there fighting for a better world. Working at WISE was both inspiration and reassurance, especially as someone hoping to make a difference from this sector. Over this summer, I wrote over 50 grants with a total ask value of well over $1.5 million. While it will be months until I see any results from this effort, I know that some of this money will be awarded, and used to empower people and places. 

In my final week of the fellowship, WISE held an all company meeting to listen to my insights on what I had learned this summer and what recommendations I had for WISE’s future. My recommendations were taken seriously, and I was told they would all be implemented in the coming year. And my lessons were welcomed with enthusiastic thoughtfulness and curiosity. This was no surprise, as WISE approaches everything with enthusiastic thoughtfulness and curiosity. I took this position to learn tangible skills I could use to work in the nonprofit sector, but emerged with those and more: a sharper understanding of nonprofits and philanthropy, and deeper understanding of my own preferences in work environments, a renewed faith in the strength of community, and a connection to a dedicated and brilliant team. I will be returning to WISE this fall to continue my work part time, and I am thrilled to continue at such a wonderful corporation.