Passion and ability are two attributes ascribed to Michele Girard, an alum of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs who earned her Master of Development Practice (MDP) in 2020.
Girard has been working with nonprofit organizations for a decade—helping them to fund, design, and evaluate projects and initiatives. She got started when she was an undergraduate, continued through her time at the Humphrey School, and now is carrying on as an entrepreneur with her own consulting firm.
Girard says her passion for development work began when she was 20 years old, when she became involved in a project to help a small city in Haiti develop a reliable and convenient water supply for its residents.
Her ability was recognized when the second phase of that project, to develop a sustainable funding mechanism to pay for maintenance of the water system, won a student award from the University of Minnesota.
‘Doing this on my own’
After completing her master’s degree at the Humphrey School in 2020, Girard was hired as development director for Little Earth in Minneapolis, the only indigenous-preference Section 8 housing community in the United States. Fresh out of grad school, she was put in charge of the financing, program design, and evaluation for that organization.
It was during the pandemic, and Girard worked remotely from Colorado, where she has family. She was able to take on individual projects outside of work hours.
“So I started having organizations asking me to do their financing, or their project design, or evaluation. For two years I was working full time and then managing three or four clients on the side,” she says. “At that point—maybe this was sheer ignorance—I said, OK, if I don’t try to do this on my own, I’m never going to do it. So I might as well try.”
Girard started her own consulting firm, Ivanhoe Development, in 2022. In just two years, she has built a staff of five people who are working out of Colorado, Virginia, and Minnesota (fellow Humphrey School alumna An Garagiola, MPP ‘23).
Girard says her company takes "a nontraditional approach" to development.
A different model
Girard explains that in the development field, an organization or nonprofit traditionally looks for a grant writer to assist in applying for funding to support a project or initiative. If the funding comes through, the grant writer’s job is done; they don’t stay on to work with the organization on the design, management, or evaluation aspects of the project.
“In that traditional model, the client should be happy,” says Girard. “You get the check and you can do whatever you want. But that just furthers the transactional cycle within nonprofit finance. I’m not trying to say anything bad about that, but we think—and know—that you should be doing more. So we say ‘no’ to that model.”
Instead, Girard’s approach is to ask their clients what they need beyond funding, in terms of designing a project and evaluating its effectiveness to ensure success—for their organization and for the larger community.
“We think the standard needs to be continuous accountability to community members, and we’re going to do that through the mechanism of finance,” she says. “We’re saying to them, ‘You have a societal obligation to stewardship. … How are you doing with community involvement? How are you ensuring that you’re doing equitable work? Are you evaluating your programs in a qualitative way to make sure those things are in alignment?”
It’s not for everyone
Girard freely acknowledges that this holistic approach will not appeal to some potential clients.
“We truly didn’t know if this model was going to work and if clients would buy into it,” Girard says, particularly because there are very few consultants that follow this same approach.
But Ivanhoe must be doing something right. Requests keep coming in, Girard says, and they try to limit their workload to 10 clients at any given time. They range from small nonprofits to large statewide organizations.
Minnesota clients include a large statewide nonprofit, an elder advocacy organization, and a Minneapolis-based affordable housing agency that recently received a $10 million gift from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
Connected to the Humphrey School
Back when she was in school, Girard credited the Humphrey School with creating an environment where she and other students felt encouraged to pursue ambitious goals.
“Having professors telling you that you can go out into the world and [have an impact]—if I had been in a less supportive environment, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do this. I think the Humphrey School does a great job of preparing students to do this type of work.”
Girard still feels that way, which fuels her desire to give back. She maintains a strong relationship with the Humphrey School, particularly faculty members David Wilsey and Angie Fertig. She’s spoken to students in some of their classes, and wants to establish an “intern pipeline” from the School to her company.
“Michele is so generous with her time, extending many invitations to host interns and to mentor students formally and informally,” says Wilsey, the director of the MDP program. “I’ve always appreciated her frank and well-considered advice to current students on what matters most along the path from matriculation to career building.”
Fertig concurs, calling Girard an “amazing role model” for current Humphrey School students.
“I am especially proud of how she uses the skills she learned at the Humphrey School to advance the common good in the world and help community organizations make change,” Fertig says.
What’s next?
While Girard is happy that the Humphrey School prepared her well for the program work she’s doing, she says she now needs some training in how to run a business. In January, she’ll begin an MBA program at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
Girard is about to bring on another employee, and is focused on how to manage the growth of her firm.
“I’m just trying to live by my two rules for the company: The first is to hire people that are way smarter than me, and the second is to not be afraid to fail. So far that’s worked out.”
