Bridgespan集团：你从未听说过的、最强大的咨询公司

他们指导着全球数十亿美金的慈善事业

来源：《The Economist/经济学人》

文章《Bridgespan Group: the most powerful consultants you’ve never heard of/Bridgespan集团：你从未听说过的、最强大的咨询公司》发布在英国杂志《The Economist/经济学人》的2022年1月1日刊上，这篇文章属于美国专栏部分，并且标题为“慈善产业综合体”。文章主要介绍了一家名为Bridgespan集团的非营利性咨询公司，这家指导了全球价值数十亿美金的慈善事业及捐赠。作为帮助亿万富翁们做出慈善捐赠决定的组织，该公司也引起了一些争议与讨论。

Over the past 18 months, the world has heard a lot about MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist formerly married to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. She has given generously to charities on the front line of the pandemic, including food banks, schools and children’s health programmes. Relatively unknown, however, is the consultancy that has helped distribute almost $9bn on Ms Scott’s behalf: the Bridgespan Group. 

在过去的一段时间里，世界已经听到了很多关于麦肯锡·斯科特的消息，这位亿万富翁慈善家曾与亚马逊的杰夫·贝佐斯结婚，她向处于新冠疫情前线的慈善机构慷慨解囊，包括食物银行、学校和儿童健康项目。然而，相对不为人知的是其中的Bridgespan集团，这家咨询公司代表麦肯锡·斯科特并帮助分配了近90亿美元。 

A non-profit consultancy, Bridgespan was spun out of Bain & Company, a management consultancy, around 20 years ago by three people, including a former managing partner. What began as a handful of smart people toiling in a small office above the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston is now a 329-person global operation with $59m in operating revenues in 2020. 

作为一家非营利性咨询公司，Bridgespan集团大约在20年前由包括一位前管理合伙人在内的三人，从管理咨询公司贝恩公司里分拆出来。起初，这家公司只有少数几人在波士顿Hard Rock咖啡馆上面的一个小办公室里辛勤工作。现在，该公司已经是一个拥有329人的全球企业，其2020年的营业收入为5900万美元。 

It has advised some of the world’s biggest donors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. The list of non-profit groups it works with is no less impressive, including cutting-edge research centres such as the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and big-name charities like the ymca.

Bridgespan集团为一些世界上最大的捐赠人提供咨询，包括比尔及梅林达·盖茨基金会、福特基金会和彭博慈善基金会。与其合作的非营利组织名单也同样令人印象深刻，包括约翰霍普金斯大学彭博公共卫生学院等尖端研究中心和YMCA等知名慈善机构。 

Bridgespan has two main lines of business. It advises wealthy donors, learning their interests and helping them create a donation strategy, then researching and doing due diligence on prospective organisations they might donate to. It also helps non-profit groups operate more efficiently. Beyond that, Bridgespan is shrouded in mystery. The only public information on the firm is contained in tax forms and the odd comment from former clients. In December Ms Scott announced plans for a new website with a “searchable database” of her gifts and more detail on her decision-making process. But many wealthy people like their privacy and Bridgespanners know how to keep quiet. 

Bridgespan集团有两条主要的业务线。它为富有的捐赠人提供建议，了解他们的兴趣并帮助他们制定捐赠策略，然后对他们可能捐赠的潜在组织进行研究和尽职调查。它还帮助非营利团体更有效地运作。除此之外，Bridgespan还被蒙上了一层神秘的面纱。因为关于该公司的唯一公开信息，只能从它的税表和其前客户的奇怪评论里找到。2021年12月，麦肯锡·斯科特宣布了一个建立新网站的计划，该网站有一个关于她的捐赠的“可搜索数据库”和关于她决策过程的更多细节。但是，许多富人都喜欢保护他们的隐私，而Bridgespan集团的人知道如何保持沉默。 

Bridgespan’s story is, in part, the story of philanthrocapitalism, a movement that began around the turn of the millennium, as billionaires started applying business principles to their giving. It is now the norm for philanthropists to treat donations like investments, setting up vast foundations, monitoring the projects they fund and quantifying the return on their money. An entire industry has emerged to support this “venture philanthropy”, including consultancies, such as Bridgespan, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Arabella Advisors, as well as researchers, donor networks and data providers, such as Candid and the National Centre for Family Philanthropy (ncfp). 

Bridgespan集团的故事在某种程度上是慈善资本主义的故事。慈善资本主义这场运动始于千禧年前后，因为亿万富翁开始将商业原则应用于他们的捐赠。现在，慈善家们像对待投资一样对待捐赠，建立庞大的基金会，监督他们资助的项目，并量化他们的资金回报，这已成为一种规范。因此，出现了一整个相关行业来支持这种“风险慈善事业”。其中包括Bridgespan集团、洛克菲勒慈善咨询、Arabella顾问公司，以及Candid和美国国家家族慈善中心（National Centre for Family Philanthropy）等研究人员、捐赠人网络和数据提供者。 

Ms Scott has upended that model. She has held off setting up a foundation, instead outsourcing the entire process of picking grantees, contacting them and dishing out cash. “That signals something dramatically new, which is deploying billions of dollars through intermediaries,” says Nick Tedesco, head of the ncfp. For Bridgespan, with great power and bumper contracts comes great responsibility. 

不过麦肯锡·斯科特颠覆了这种模式。她没有成立基金会，而是将挑选受资助者、与他们联系和发放现金的整个过程外包出去。美国国家家族慈善中心的负责人尼克·特德斯科说：“这预示着一种全新的东西，即通过中介机构部署数十亿美元。这对于Bridgespan集团来说，巨大的权力和丰厚的合同也带来了巨大的责任。” 

The first challenge for any organisation trying to decide who deserves a multimillion-dollar grant is to make sure it has a full picture of all the non-profit groups doing good work in poor communities. Bridgespan trumpets its offices in India and South Africa, filled with local staff. It hires almost twice as many women as men and less than half its staff are white. Nidhi Sahni, who heads Bridgespan’s American advisory business, says the firm makes sure it doesn’t just settle on the “usual suspects”. She is adamant, for instance, that proficiency in English should not determine whether a potential grantee makes it onto the firm’s radar. 

对于任何一个试图决定谁应该获得数百万美元捐款的组织来说，第一个挑战是确保该组织全面了解所有在贫困社区、良好开展工作的非营利组织。Bridgespan集团大量宣传其在印度和南非的办事处，因为其中充满了当地员工。该公司雇用的女性人数几乎是男性的两倍，而且只有不到一半的员工是白人。负责Bridgespan集团美国咨询业务的尼迪·萨尼表示，该公司确保不会只满足于那些“普通常见的目标”。比如说，尼迪·萨尼坚持认为，英语熟练程度不应该决定一个潜在受资助者是否能进入该公司的视野。 

The next hurdle is dealing with potential conflicts of interest. Consultants that advise rich people on how to donate their money often also work with non-profit groups jostling for funding. William Schambra of the Hudson Institute, a think-tank, worries leaders of such organisations might feel compelled to hire Bridgespan for advice so they might come to mind when the consultancy recommends potential grantees. News that it is advising Ms Scott, who says she plans to give away her fortune of nearly $60bn “until the safe is empty”, only adds to that pressure. “If I had a non-profit I would be banging down their door,” Mr Schambra says. 

下一个障碍是处理潜在的利益冲突。为富人提供捐赠建议的咨询公司，往往也与争夺资金的非营利组织合作。智库哈德逊研究所(Hudson Institute)的威廉·斯坎布拉表示了对这一现象的担心。因为非营利组织的领导人可能会感到不得不聘请Bridgespan集团来提供咨询，只有这样，咨询公司推荐潜在的受资助者时，才会想到这些非营利组织。麦肯锡·斯科特表示“在掏空她的保险箱之前”，她计划捐出600亿美金的财富。而Bridgespan集团正在为麦肯锡·斯科特提供建议咨询。这一消息也增加了压力，威廉·斯坎布拉说：“如果我有一个非营利组织，我肯定会去敲开Bridgespan集团的门。” 

Bridgespan’s response is simple: “Given the amazing organisations we work with, some of them household names, it would be surprising not to have some of them come to the attention of donors.” William Foster, the group’s managing partner, is clear that he can’t get a non-profit leader a lunch meeting with a big-name donor. In its conflict-of-interest policy, Bridgespan says that it “do[es] not make introductions to donor clients or share confidential information about donor priorities or strategies.” Nor does it promote non-profits to potential donors. Even so, one in every 20 groups that has received funding from a philanthropist it advises had also been a client in the five years prior to receiving funding, by its own estimates. The list of organisations Ms Scott has donated money to includes several Bridgespan clients.

Bridgespan集团的回应很简单：“在与我们合作的那些令人惊叹的组织当中，有一些是家喻户晓的。如果这些家喻户晓的组织没有引起捐赠人的注意，这反而是令人惊奇的。”Bridgespan集团的管理合伙人威廉·福斯特很清楚，他不能让一个非营利组织的领导人与大名鼎鼎的捐赠人进行午餐会谈。Bridgespan集团在其利益冲突政策中表示，它“不向捐赠人客户做介绍，也不分享关于捐赠人优先事项或战略的机密信息”；它也不向潜在的捐赠人宣传非营利组织。即便如此，根据Bridgespan集团自己的估计，在那些从其提供咨询的慈善家那里获得资金的团体当中，如果从该团体获得资金之前的五年内开始算的话，每20个团体中就有一个是Bridgespan集团的客户。比如，麦肯锡·斯科特所捐赠的组织名单中，就包括了几个Bridgespan集团的客户。 

There is another tricky clash. Bridgespan, like many middlemen in the world of philanthropy, is itself a non-profit. In some ways, that is surprising. Though Bridgespan does not disclose its pricing model, researchers that cover the philanthropic sector say its rates can be hefty. And it competes for projects with for-profit consultancies such as McKinsey. 

还有另外一个棘手的冲突。Bridgespan集团和慈善界的许多中间人一样，本身就是一个非营利组织。在某些方面，这点是令人惊讶的。尽管Bridgespan集团没有披露其定价模式，但研究慈善事业的研究人员说，其咨询价格可能很高。而且它还与麦肯锡那些营利性咨询公司竞争项目。 

Nonetheless, Bridgespan’s fees cover only about 75% of costs, and like many non-profits, the group relies on donations to fund the full range of its work. The consequences of this can be rather tangled. Alongside the groups working on education, health, gender equality and gay rights, Ms Scott’s list of grantees includes a number of intermediaries in the philanthropic sector—including the Bridgespan Group itself. 

尽管如此，Bridgespan集团的收费只能覆盖其成本的75%。而且像许多非营利组织一样，该组织依靠捐款来资助其全部工作。这样做的后果可能是相当纠结的。除了从事教育、卫生、性别平等和同性恋权利工作的团体外，麦肯锡·斯科特的受赠者名单中还包括一些慈善部门的中介机构，包括Bridgespan集团本身。