Tamanna—Turning Tears Into Laughter
As part of its community service outreach, Booz & Company has provided pro bono services to Tamanna, a Lebanese non-profit association that grants wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions.
Since its establishment in 2005, Tamanna has given hope, strength, and joy to many Lebanese children. From humble beginnings it has evolved into an association that has fulfilled more than 650 wishes, averaging three per week. The children’s wishes are limited only by their imaginations, and might be having a particular toy, meeting a celebrity, travelling, or
playacting in the occupation of the child’s dreams, such as a firefighter or an astronaut.
Although successful at fundraising, Tamanna has been facing a number of challenges common to small, successful startups: pursuing too many items on its own wish list and lacking the organization to prioritize them.
Tamanna’s service model was limited in its coverage, reaching only a portion of hospitals in Lebanon and serving only children with cancer. Likewise, its wish-granting procedure was not fully developed—in some cases, a gift would simply be delivered to the hospital, leaving the opportunity to create a comprehensive experience around it unexplored. Tamanna also had problems in its operating model, including a lack of governance, unclear roles and responsibilities across the organization, and an absence of program management for volunteers. And although the core business still needed to be strengthened, Tamanna’s board was also considering a number of growth priorities, such as expanding into new services and countries. Booz & Company agreed to support Tamanna in institutionalizing its operating model and prioritizing its growth initiatives.
Our first step was to conduct interviews with key stakeholders to build a strong understanding of the current situation and the challenges Tamanna faced. We then met with representatives from the Ministry of Public Health and prominent medical experts to understand the breadth and depth of critical illnesses in Lebanon, in order to understand which segments of critically ill children the organization wasn’t reaching. Finally, we reached out to international wish-granting associations such as Make-A-Wish Foundation and Association Petits Princes to uncover best practices and develop benchmarks on similar associations worldwide.
Based on these assessments, we proposed improvement opportunities along the wish-granting value chain. On the service model front, we recommended a formalized approach to reach out to all hospitals in Lebanon that care for critically ill children and developed a medical eligibility framework that allows Tamanna to evaluate the criticality of each case. We also transformed the wish-granting experience from simply delivering gifts to delivering joy by creating a memorable experience.
On the operating model front, we developed a robust organization structure, identified the optimal mix of salaried employees and volunteers, formalized key processes, and revised the governance model. Finally, we developed a high-level implementation road map across three phases to enact the recommendations.
The Tamanna board has approved the strategic direction and enacted the recommended structure; we have developed a detailed implementation plan to bring the right people on board and put the rest of our recommendations in place.
This pro bono project further demonstrates Booz & Company’s commitment to give back to the community, and it gives the firm excellent insight into the local NGO landscape to better understand the challenges these organizations face.