Embark Student Corp / Embark Foundation
Foundation Strategy & Guiding Principles
Designing a Scalable Go-Forward Model for Corporate Philanthropy
Challenge
Embark operates as a social enterprise with a mandated commitment to reinvest millions of dollars annually into grants, scholarships, and student-focused initiatives. While the intent was clear, the Foundation lacked a formalized strategy, operating model, and guiding principles — resulting in an ad hoc approach to granting that limited scale, consistency, and long-term impact.
At a critical growth inflection point, Embark’s leadership team was focused on scaling the core for-profit business and did not have the internal capacity to design and operationalize a fully integrated foundation strategy aligned with corporate purpose and brand.
Solution
Embark engaged The Fractional CMO to lead a structured, collaborative strategy development process to formally stand up the Embark Foundation. Early diagnostic work identified a material alignment gap between the for-profit corporation and the Foundation.
The engagement began with the development of formal Guiding Principles, using a disciplined top-down and bottom-up approach that engaged leadership, board stakeholders, and internal teams. This work aligned mission, purpose, values, and stakeholder expectations across both entities.
Building on this foundation, The Fractional CMO delivered a fully articulated, actionable Foundation strategy, including mandate clarity, priority program areas, governance considerations, resourcing assumptions, and a phased roadmap to scale impact responsibly and credibly.
Results
Delivered a clear and compelling set of Guiding Principles that re-anchored the Foundation’s mission and aligned Embark’s for-profit and non-profit entities around shared values, purpose, and standards of stakeholder engagement.
Provided the road map for the Foundation to move from an ad hoc granting approach to a strategic, impact-driven operating model with defined priorities and measurable outcomes.
Produced a board-ready, implementable long-term strategic plan, enabling Embark’s senior leadership team and external partners to confidently stand up and scale the Foundation when ready.
