ABOUT THE FIRM

Ekstrom & Associates was founded by Helmer N. Ekstrom in 1997 as a natural extension of his earlier work as a consultant, a community foundation director and CEO, and as president and CEO of a national association of consulting firms.

Angela G. Powers joined Helmer in 1998, marking the firm's initial move into becoming a team of seasoned senior-level professionals who advise philanthropic organizations, individuals, and corporations across the US and around the globe.

Our organizing principle is to build a team of the best people, with substantial practical experience and expertise. All Ekstrom & Associates Team members have held senior level executive positions in foundations or the organizations that serve them.

We are practioners who have walked in our clients shoes.

Why Ekstrom & Associates

Perspective — Every client has the benefit of the broad perspective resident in the interdisciplinary expertise of our seasoned team.
Breadth of Knowledge Base — Our client experience and network connections with those in the practice and management of philanthropy across the US and around the globe provides us a wide ranging wealth of practical ideas and solutions which we tap to deliver better results for our clients.
Been There — As a team of seasoned senior level executives in the practice of philanthropy, we have access to a considerable inventory of mistakes made and, thankfully, lessons learned from those mistakes, including how to see them coming and avoid them.
Objectivity — Our agenda is our client's agenda. We respect a client's aims and purposes. While we are not shy about asking the tough questions and saying what we think, we know our job is to help our clients achieve their objectives.
Rigor — While the Ekstrom & Associates experience base guides us on what to look for in a client situation, we will not let ourselves be trapped by preconceived notions. That is because our experience also includes discovering surprises — things that have flown in the face of preconceived notions.

Our Approach

At Ekstrom & Associates, our approach to work with clients is value based. And the value is delivering solutions that achieve a client's objectives. That means no off — the — shelf methodologies. Each engagement is specifically shaped by client objectives and needs. So we begin with a preliminary assessment based upon interviews with all the key persons. Only then can we be confident we fully understand client circumstances, the factors and forces at work, the challenges faced, and the outcomes desired.

Based upon the inquiry and examination of that preliminary assessment, we identify the core strategic questions and project objectives that will lead to framing our recommendations for the client engagement methodology

Where possible and practical, we suggest specific options for partnering, specifying at what points and in what ways Ekstrom & Associates can be of use to the client, along with the associated costs involved.

Finally, as we frame our recommended client engagement methodology, we keep the following guiding principles in mind.

We take a team approach to our work wherever feasible. Simply, it produces better results. More than one pair of eyes looking and probing allows us to go deeper and produce more accurate conclusions.
We look beyond the bandaids for opportunities to provide lasting systemic solutions.
Our approach gets at system inefficiencies and misalignment of resources with priorities. The bottom line for us is how to get better results from the capacity available.
Simply adding staff or otherwise adding capacity without an aligned system that focuses energy on priorities yields substantially less real incremental gain in capacity and results.
Since success brings a higher volume of activity, we make sure that the solutions implemented must be ones that will continue to fit well beyond the here and now into the future.

We charge a single fee for our project work, plus reasonable out-of-pocket expenses. We do not believe that a "meter" should be running, and we do not want to put clients in the position of making an investment decision every time our help may be required. Consequently, clients have unlimited access to us and our resources within the scope of the project for a single fee. In this manner, they know their investment from the outset.

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