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 when it comes to capital, business organization, and strategy, and then negotiate the transactions that bring those options to life.
In this particular case, the client’s board was discouraged. The executive director and leadership team had taken a hard look at the future. They reviewed reimbursement trends in the part of 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 went wrong was not unique. Many hospitals and healthcare organizations face similar challenges. Business models shift, and reimbursement from government healthcare programs does not always cover costs.
But the deeper issue 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 only on the survival of 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 preserving the organization as it existed, but about continuing to serve public health in their communities in the most effective way possible.
With that shift in perspective, they started to think differently.
They asked how they could pursue their mission more effectively, even if it meant changing their structure. They explored partnerships and began looking for 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 efficiently, more profitably, and with greater long-term sustainability than the nonprofit could on its own.
From there, the path became clear.
They made the decision to sell their operations to these private sector partners, structuring the deal in a way that ensured the mission would continue.
They then took the proceeds from that transaction and redeployed the capital back into their organization, using it to continue advancing 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 that would not have been possible otherwise.
They were able to preserve and expand their impact, even as they transformed their structure.
This is the kind of work we find most rewarding.
It is why nonprofits make up a significant part of what we do at Oaklyn Consulting, alongside our work with business owners.