No two nonprofits are the same. Each is shaped by the community it serves, the challenges it encounters, and the people who bring its mission to life. Many, however, face a common set of pressures. Resources are tight. The needs of those they serve are often urgent. Expectations run high. Teams often work with deep commitment but under constant strain, balancing service delivery, fundraising, stakeholder engagement, and day-to-day problem-solving.
In this environment, operational challenges are usually part of something more complex, and issues such as missed targets, stalled projects, or persistent bottlenecks are often just the symptoms of much deeper root causes. Teams may address what’s immediately visible, only for the same challenges to resurface later on down the line.
What’s more, nonprofits often operate in contexts where uncertainty is just part of business as usual. Even the strongest of plans can be disrupted by external shocks such as shifts in donor priorities, unexpected staff turnover, or changes in community needs. When the stakes involve people’s livelihoods, health, or access to opportunity, these setbacks can come with real consequences.
New approaches to problem solving and prevention
As nonprofits face up to these challenges, two capabilities become especially valuable: the ability to understand the true “why” behind a problem, and the discipline to anticipate what could go wrong before it does.
These are the kinds of capabilities McKinsey.org helps nonprofits strengthen. Through an interactive learning journey, nonprofits work with McKinsey.org to strengthen essential skills that support more effective, mission-driven work. Among the capabilities taught are two that specifically address problem solving: “Get to the Why” and “Conduct Pre-mortems.”
Getting to the why helps teams look deeper than the surface of a problem to understand what is truly driving it. A core part of this skill is the “Five Whys” method – an iterative approach in which teams are invited to ask “why?” repeatedly to move rapidly from symptom to cause.
Meanwhile, conducting premortems at the outset of a project gives teams a structured way to anticipate what could go wrong before it happens. Unlike traditional postmortems, which examine what went wrong after the fact, a pre-mortem moves the reflection to the start of the process, when teams can still spot risks and strengthen their plans.
Enhancing R&D at One Acre Fund
One Acre Fund is a nonprofit that supports smallholder farmers across Africa with the supplies and training they need to grow more food and increase their incomes. Its experience of partnering with McKinsey.org demonstrates the impact these two key skills can have.
Milindi Sibomana PhD, Chief Agriculture Officer at One Acre Fund, describes how the “Five-Whys” technique has become central to the organization’s R&D programs by helping it design solutions that farmers can immediately see the benefit of. “We learned how to ask deeper questions as a problem is surfacing,” he explains. “As we scale new products, the “Five Whys” ensures we’re offering the most optimized service to farmers because we’ve addressed the issue driving everything else.” He adds that root-cause analysis has helped make program design “more human-centered,” as it is grounded in farmers’ real needs and constraints. Field integration supervisor Aline Uwibambe has seen similar benefits in day-to-day testing and iteration: “In the field, when you only solve what’s on the surface, the problem keeps coming back. After learning the Five Whys, I’ve been able to solve issues more effectively.”
Meanwhile, premortems have reshaped how R&D teams plan and prioritize. CEO Eric Pohlman notes, “Our R&D team used to do post-mortems after a pilot, which meant we sometimes lost time. By switching to premortems, we analyze risks earlier, helping us invest resources more efficiently and increasing the likelihood of real impact at the outcome.”
Drawing on these two problem-solving skills, One Acre Fund’s R&D teams are able to take an even more successful approach, helping it improve the design of its products and, ultimately, be of greater service to farmers.
Harnessing insight and understanding to improve impact
As One Acre Fund’s experience shows, building the right capabilities can transform how teams understand problems, design solutions, and plan for what lies ahead. By getting to the real reason behind challenges and anticipating risks before they surface, teams at nonprofits can make stronger decisions and improve the products and services they offer to end users. These skills not only enhance the organization’s ability to innovate, but they also help ensure that every effort leads to meaningful and lasting impact for the communities they serve.