Throughout the late 1960s, Massachusetts was in the process of de-institutionalizing various populations that had been served by the state, such as prisoners and the mentally ill. Nonprofit organizations were responding by building new programs to serve these populations in community-based settings. TDC was founded as an incubator to design, develop and test such programs. If a program was successful, it was spun off into a self-sustaining organization with an independent board and funding sources. For its first ten years, TDC expanded and contracted with the development of these programs.

By this time, the nonprofit sector had grown exponentially. Local funders began to recognize a need to help organizations think more strategically about their missions and service delivery, and asked TDC to help. Capitalizing on the organizational development and management skills acquired during the firm’s incubator phase, TDC turned its energies to developing organizational assessments and strategic plans for nonprofits.

At the same time, reflecting on some of the challenges facing clients, TDC began to think about how nonprofits fund their work and their access to capital. TDC worked with public and private funders in Massachusetts to study the benefits of loan funds for community development needs. TDC then raised funds for and ran five loan funds through the mid-1980s.

Over the next twenty years, TDC’s experience both broadened and deepened. The firm expanded into other parts of the sector, such as the environment and arts and culture, while maintaining its work with human service providers and education organizations. By this time, strategic plans were becoming more commonplace in the nonprofit sector, and TDC was inspired to add implementation planning to its suite of services in order to flesh out plans that had previously just focused on vision and goals. Over time these processes were combined into more rigorous and holistic strategic business planning processes, more reminiscent of the work TDC does today with a strong emphasis on analyzing data and understanding the local market.

In the last fifteen years, TDC has deepened its work with public and private funders, as sector-wide research and writing has taken on a more prominent role in the practice. We began to look closely at some of the critical issues facing the nonprofit sector, such as capitalization, the use of debt, and scope and scale – all challenges that we had seen our clients grapple with over the years. Our research is always informed by our work with organizations, and in turn, we believe organizations benefit from the advancement of our thinking.