Negotiating from a Position of Strength
Our client, a nonprofit, believed they were going to go out of business.
With our help, they didn’t. They found a sustainable home for their operations, netted eighty million dollars, and completely transformed how they pursue their mission.
Oaklyn Consulting is an investment banking firm that helps businesses and nonprofits understand their options around capital, business organization, and strategy, and then negotiate the transactions that bring those options to life.
In this case, the client’s board was discouraged.
The executive director and leadership team had taken a hard look at the future. They examined reimbursement trends within the healthcare system where they operated and came to the conclusion that they would be out of business within a few years.
After fifty years of serving their communities, they believed they were about to fail.
What they were facing was not unusual.
Many hospitals and healthcare organizations encounter similar challenges. Business models shift, and reimbursement from government healthcare programs does not always cover costs.
But the deeper issue was not just financial. It was that they had misunderstood what counted as success.
Where we were able to help most was in reframing what winning actually looked like.
Instead of focusing solely on preserving the legal entity they had been stewarding, we encouraged them to think more broadly about their mission. We helped them look beyond the structure of the organization and explore creative ways to continue serving that mission through different models.
They began to redefine success.
It was no longer about maintaining the organization as it existed, but about continuing to serve public health in their communities in the most effective way possible.
With that shift, their approach changed.
They started thinking creatively about how to pursue their mission and began exploring partnerships with mission-aligned private sector operators who could carry forward the work they had been doing.
In their case, this involved home health and hospice services.
These operators could deliver those services more effectively, more profitably, and with greater long-term sustainability than the nonprofit could on its own.
From there, they made a strategic decision.
They negotiated the sale of their operations to these private sector partners in a way that ensured the mission would continue. Then, they took the proceeds from the transaction and redeployed that capital back into their organization, continuing to serve the same public health mission in a new way.
By thinking creatively about their future, understanding their capital options, and navigating a complex transaction with the right strategy, they achieved an outcome they could not have reached on their own.
They preserved and expanded their impact, even as they transformed their structure.
This is the kind of work we find most rewarding.
This is why nonprofits make up a significant part of what we do at Oaklyn Consulting, alongside our work with business owners.