Partner Profiles

Mike Burns, Partner

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Mike has been a nonprofit capacity builder and pracademic for more than forty years.  In his roles as consultant, author and educator he has facilitated common sense solutions to ongoing challenges in the pursuit of mission with an emphasis on governance, strategic and business planning and preparing for mergers.  Mike graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Marquette University and a master’s degree in nonprofit management with a focus on governance from Lesley University.  He also completed a graduate certificate in nonprofit marketing management from the University of Hartford.  In addition to his consulting work, Mike commercially grows asparagus and garlic (and other veggies too) and partners with his wife as a foster parent.

Recent client assignments include the following:

  • Governance: For an arts organization, Mike facilitated a series of board discussions to address historical structural challenges (including a by-laws redesign), improve recruitment, and increase member engagement all resulting in a more effective and responsive governing body.
  • Nonprofit Board Leadership Study: As part of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management Governance Affinity Group team, in August 2015 and 2019 respectively, conducted national surveys to better understand how nonprofit board leaders arrive at, train, and view their roles in relationship to the board and the community.
  • Partnership Assessment and Facilitation: Following an unexpected loss of the founder-leader, Mike was recruited by the Save the Sound board chair to assess the board’s capacity and options available to ensure the continued pursuit of mission.  Based on the assessment, Mike was asked to identify and screen prospective partners and subsequently facilitate a preliminary agreement to become part of another environmental organization.  Save the Sound continues its work in a new “home”.
  • Strategic Planning:  For more than 15 years BWB Solutions has facilitated SARAH Inc.’s three-year planning processes.  SARAH is dedicated to supporting individuals with differing abilities and planning has been an effective tool to help board and staff address ever-changing internal and external opportunities and challenges.
  • American Public Health Association: Business Plan Development and Sustainability Consultation: In partnership with the TCC Group, training  was provided for business plan development for its state and regional public health associations and advised APHA on a technical assistance plan to improve the Affiliates’ potential for long-term sustainability.  Engaged members completed their plans.

Mike’s Blogs:
Non-Profit Board Crisis
Non-Profit Business Planning 

Email: mikeb@bwbsolutions.com
Linkedin: Mike Burns
Direct line: 203.508.1462

Kevin McQueen, Partner

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Kevin brings extensive experience in corporate finance with a deep commitment to facilitating social change through mission-driven organizations. He joined BWB Solutions in 2001 and focuses on developing a broad range of impact investing and organizational strategies for development finance institutions, foundations, and other ventures. He currently serves as Director of Lending at The Leviticus Fund, an impact investment fund that makes direct loans to affordable housing developers and other nonprofit ventures. Kevin is also an adjunct faculty member with the Milano School of Management and Urban Policy at The New School in New York City, where he teaches courses on impact investing and financial management development. Kevin is a graduate of Brown University and is pursuing a master’s degree in Economics from the New School for Social Research.

Recent client assignments include the following:

  • Impact Investing Strategy – developed a strategy for the John T. Gorman Foundation to launch its investment activities in innovative ideas and opportunities that improve the lives of Maine’s most vulnerable people.
  • Economic Impact Analysis – measured the revenues generated by an annual theatrical performance produced by the Classical Theatre of Harlem, which showcases free programs in underserved communities in New York City.
  • Due Diligence – assessed the capital demand and needs among a group of grantees of an initiative led by the Kresge Foundation that engaged multi-sector, community-driven partnerships in efforts to reduce health disparities caused by system-based or social inequity.
  • Market Research – with support from the Hitachi Foundation and the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, authored Are Good Jobs Good Investments? that explores how traditional and mission-driven investors in the U.S. are defining, measuring, and investing in good jobs firms.
  • Having It All: How Public Radio Stations Can Provide Great Service and Live Within Their Means. With partner John Weiser, Kevin wrote an analysis of how leading public radio stations across the US were combining good financial health with superior audience service. The report makes recommendations that can help public radio stations (and other nonprofit organizations) meet their missions and increase their financial sustainability at the same time.

Email: kevinm@bwbsolutions.com
Linkedin: Kevin McQueen
Direct line: 203.508.1464

John Weiser, Partner

John is passionate about building better lives and opportunities for low income people and communities.  For the past 35 years, he has enabled organizations serving these communities to better achieve mission and to improve their financial health.  His creativity and passion, together with his business, analytic, and facilitation skills, have led to contributions in a wide range of disciplines as he and his clients worked  together to find innovative ways to use limited resources to achieve better results for these communities, including:

  • Business and strategic planning – enable organizations like Kids in Need of Defense to dramatically scale up their program and their impact.
  • Financial analysis and modeling – develop financial models for CDFIs like the Low Income investment Fund, to provide a more precise understanding of their costs and revenues by product so they can make better-informed decisions about the trade-off between mission and product profitability.
  • Innovation networks– manage learning communities for funders like the Citi Foundation to help cohorts of their grantees capture and share innovations ripe for replication.
  • Child care – co-founded Opportunities Exchange, a nonprofit that helps childcare providers to create collaboratives that free up the resources, time and money needed to provide better quality child care.  Through Opportunities Exchange, John has advised dozens of collaboratives and raised millions of dollars to improve the financial stability and quality of child care providers.
  • Win-win partnerships – co-authored “Untapped: Creating Value in Underserved Communities”, which offers practical, tested tools companies can use to engage consumers, workers, and suppliers in ways that benefit both businesses and underserved communities.

John graduated magna cum laude in mathematics from Harvard University.  He holds a Master’s Degree in Public and Private Management from the Yale School of Management.

Recent client assignments include:

  • First 5 LA: with generous support from First 5 LA, John led a team in a multiyear project that resulted in the creation of three collaboratives of childcare providers in LA County.  The collaboratives are enabling childcare providers to share information, professional development, substitutes, specialized staff, and fund development.  This helps providers to manage their organizations more effectively, increased revenues, reduce their costs, and improve quality of the care they provide to children and families.
  • Grounded Solutions Network (GSN): GSN is seeking to expand financing available for the purchase of homes whose long-term affordability would be preserved by being placed in community land trusts or similar entities. The fund would be used to provide secondary mortgages to homeowners (working with community land trusts or the like) which would be paid off with a share of the appreciation in the home price upon sale of the home.  If the home price does not appreciate, the homeowner is not required to make any repayment.  BWB Solutions developed a 15-year model, which enabled GSN to forecast the financial feasibility of the loan fund under various assumptions about market growth and financing cost.
  • Appalachian Community Capital (ACC): BWB Solutions led a consensus-based strategic planning process for ACC Board and staff to create the strategic framework and direction for this wholesale capital intermediary, which invests in CDFIs that lend to small businesses in the Appalachian region. Our firm developed detailed financial projections and business plan, which enabled ACC to close on $36 million of first-round funding. In addition, the firm developed recommendations for the fund’s impact reporting system and identified potential investors for second-round funding.
  • Inclusiv: Another client that has mission and diverse population base similar to Prosperity Now is Inclusiv, the financial intermediary and thought leader for community development credit unions serving 10 million low-income residents of urban, rural and reservation-based communities across the US. In 2019, BWB Solutions assisted this organization with the design and launch of a secondary capital fund that would invest primarily in credit unions addressing the savings and borrowing needs of communities of color in the southeastern states.

Email: johnw@bwbsolutions.com
Linkedin: John Weiser
Direct line: 203.508.1460