Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) (B): Implementing a Strategic Growth Vision for the Future

This case focuses on the efforts of a nonprofit's leadership team to implement a new strategy across a highly federated set of chapters worldwide to serve its beneficiaries in broader, more comprehensive ways.
In early 2024, leaders of Ronald McDonald House Charities Global (RMHC), including CEO Katie Fitzgerald, COO Rodney Jordan, and board chair Ginger Hardage, were in the process of rolling out a new strategy--the Impact Framework--to the nonprofit's 250 global chapters. The Framework, created collaboratively with chapter leadership, encouraged chapters to address families' unmet needs before, during, and after treatment while growing the nonprofit's signature programs: free-standing Ronald McDonald Houses and within-hospital Family Rooms, both of which served families with hospitalized children.
Students will take the perspective of RMHC leaders as they consider how widely each chapter varies on key dimensions such as maturity, the scope of current offerings, local needs, and leadership's tenure and experience. For example, while some chapters' programs already reflectedelements of the new strategy, others were working to launch their first core programs. Moreover, some well-established chapters were hesitant to diminish their longstanding focus on legacy programs and might actively resist the new Impact Framework.
In analyzing the case material, students will develop an implementation approach that considers each chapter's context and needs, as well as the stated system-wide goal of "Serving More Families, Better" while both elevating RMHC's brand and keeping it aligned with that of McDonald's, its corporate partner.