Taking Root
November 2007
November 2007
Aaron Hurst took his personal credit card and ideas that had germinated when he was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in the mid-1990s to found the Taproot Foundation, the largest non-profit consulting firm in the country.
San Francisco-based Taproot brings professional business services such as marketing, information technology, and human resources to non-profits who are too focused on their core mission and too under-funded to do the job themselves. Taproot recruits professionals to do pro bono work for the non-profits, but remains as the manager over each project. "We don't match, we manage," Hurst said. "We're not a dating service." A Taproot case manager is assigned to each project, whether it is to improve a Web site or establish a database. Services valued at $24 million have been performed since the beginning, Hurst said.
The idea for Taproot was born at the Ginsberg Center when Hurst served as a criminal justice program peer facilitator for Project Community (sociology 389). Across the street, not 100 feet away, stood the U-M Business School.
When he was at U-M, Hurst said he came to believe that the business school had the most to gain and the most to give to service-learning: reach out to the community to teach students about strategic planning, leadership, project management, consulting, and more, he said. At the same time, they could accomplish important community work. "There is so much opportunity for service to be done," Hurst said. Hurst took this notion to create Taproot in 2001.
Between the time he graduated in 1996 with a general studies degree he created that focused on service-learning and 2001, he spent time working in both the non-profit world and the business world (in product management) to learn the ropes of each. "I wanted to learn why a $1 million service agency stayed a $1 million service agency but a $1 million company could grow into a multi-billion-dollar company," Hurst said.
He took the leap to Taproot, piling up personal credit card debt for 1 1/2 years to keep his organization afloat. Today, Taproot receives funding from 50 foundations and corporate sponsors, including the Gates Foundation and Time Warner. It has offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York, and Chicago and will open offices in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles next year.
It's not difficult to find people to do the pro bono work, Hurst said. "A lot of people want to do it, they just don't know it's possible. If you don't waste their time, people are incredibly generous."
San Francisco-based Taproot brings professional business services such as marketing, information technology, and human resources to non-profits who are too focused on their core mission and too under-funded to do the job themselves. Taproot recruits professionals to do pro bono work for the non-profits, but remains as the manager over each project. "We don't match, we manage," Hurst said. "We're not a dating service." A Taproot case manager is assigned to each project, whether it is to improve a Web site or establish a database. Services valued at $24 million have been performed since the beginning, Hurst said.
The idea for Taproot was born at the Ginsberg Center when Hurst served as a criminal justice program peer facilitator for Project Community (sociology 389). Across the street, not 100 feet away, stood the U-M Business School.
When he was at U-M, Hurst said he came to believe that the business school had the most to gain and the most to give to service-learning: reach out to the community to teach students about strategic planning, leadership, project management, consulting, and more, he said. At the same time, they could accomplish important community work. "There is so much opportunity for service to be done," Hurst said. Hurst took this notion to create Taproot in 2001.
Between the time he graduated in 1996 with a general studies degree he created that focused on service-learning and 2001, he spent time working in both the non-profit world and the business world (in product management) to learn the ropes of each. "I wanted to learn why a $1 million service agency stayed a $1 million service agency but a $1 million company could grow into a multi-billion-dollar company," Hurst said.
He took the leap to Taproot, piling up personal credit card debt for 1 1/2 years to keep his organization afloat. Today, Taproot receives funding from 50 foundations and corporate sponsors, including the Gates Foundation and Time Warner. It has offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York, and Chicago and will open offices in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles next year.
It's not difficult to find people to do the pro bono work, Hurst said. "A lot of people want to do it, they just don't know it's possible. If you don't waste their time, people are incredibly generous."
