Nick, one of our Admissions Coordinators, has gone abroad with Beacon before. But his experience working with our Winter DC program was something truly special, as this account will show you.

Consulting with Beacon for The Salvation Army

I’ve worked with Beacon for one year. I’ve spoken with thousands of students, parents, faculty members, and consulting firms during this time. I participated in our 4-week program in Madrid, learning consulting under a Bain alumnus, which also happened to be my first time out of the United States. You would think being out of the country and experiencing a new culture would be the most impactful experience I’ve had during my 12 months with Beacon...but you would be wrong. Turns out, it was actually while I was working with our Fellows this January - we partnered with The Salvation Army during our 1 week winter program in Washington, D.C. Okay, so what made it so impactful in such a short amount of time? And how do you define impact anyway?

Impact is a tough term to quantify or measure, but it is possible. When something has a big impact, it's something that sticks with you. This week is going to stick with every single one of these students for many reasons, but I’ll highlight two:

The students learned high level analytical skills - not from reading a textbook, but directly from a former BCG consultant who also has 2 years of experience working in strategy at the United Nations. The Fellows were not typical students during this program - they were real consultants doing real consulting work, from market research and data analysis all the way down to creating a slide deck and presenting their recommendations to the client on the final day.
The Salvation Army is an amazing worldwide organization, but it has a lot of room for operational improvements. The work we did in just one week had a huge impact on this amazing non-profit.

So what did we really end up doing in one week anyway?

We helped come up with solutions for several high level problems, but the most important one directly dealt with the red kettles. The biggest donation driver for The Salvation Army is their annual Red Kettle Campaign. This large-scale campaign involves placing over 200 red kettles in the DC area during the Christmas season. One of our major accomplishments during the Fellowship was doing a deep analysis into the performance of these red kettles with the end goal of trying to help maximize their donations (i.e. day of week, time of day, and location of kettles) and minimize their operational costs. The students got right to work doing research, brainstorming methodologies, analyzing data, and coming up with a fantastic presentation based on their recommendations and conclusions.

The results …

The impact our Fellows had on The Salvation Army was truly something special. After doing a deep analysis on all of the hidden operational costs associated with each kettle, we found that The Salvation Army can actually increase profitability in one region by 13% by simply removing 5 kettles. How amazing is that? You’re probably asking yourself, well what if the kettles are moved to new locations? Our Fellows asked this same question. Upon researching new locations and using conservative estimates, profitability of this region would increase by a whopping 140% or 2.4x!

Needless to say, The Salvation Army was blown away at the insight, data, and recommendations provided by our Fellows (who had no prior consulting experience by the way), and our fellows were amazed at the skills they learned, the impact they had on the client, and the relationships they built along the way. Keep in mind: this project happened over only a few short days, but was powered by ambitious, motivated students and an experienced project lead who could teach them the essentials of consulting on the fly.

On the last day after the farewell dinner at an authentic Brazilian restaurant in the heart of our Nation’s capital, literal tears were shed as the students were saying their goodbyes, knowing they’d see each other again sometime in the not-so-distant future. The impact this program had on the students, The Salvation Army, our Project Lead, and myself cannot be overstated.

Meaningful Impact: Consulting with Beacon for The Salvation Army