Byron L. Tweeten is the founder and chief executive officer of Growth Design Corporation, a professional business services firm serving not-for-profit organizations. Through Growth Design, he has pioneered the concept of services delivery utilizing integrated teams to partner with clients in creating their own preferred future. Service teams deliver to more than 20 markets in the United States and Europe.
In addition, he is a recognized authority and strategist around institutional change and transformation. His creative and innovative client solutions coupled with his personal network of relationships with key leaders in the not-for-profit arena, have set a standard and new model for high-quality services.
In 1970, he founded Next Door Foundation, Inc., a Milwaukee neighborhood-based social service agency that specializes in at-risk children and treatment programs for adolescent addiction. Today it remains a model organization for social change in urban settings and was recently selected by the Warren Buffett Family Foundations for one of four national organizational pilot projects (Educare). Growth Design remains of counsel to the Next Door Foundation.
As a senior strategist and facilitator at Growth Design, his client work has reflected the integration of best business practices with innovative resource solutions that include: enterprise development; collaborative initiatives; mergers and acquisitions; organizational reinvention and process redesign; major philanthropy strategies and initiatives; and the stewardship of organizational resources.
Since 1981, the nation's largest and most significant not-for-profit organizations have retained Byron Tweeten for his strategic counsel and ability to design and facilitate complex strategic thinking and planning. Examples of his work include:
- Assisted in the design of a ten campus national university system and facilitated planning dialogue that resulted in significant growth in academic quality and financial health;
- Facilitated the planning and development of a leadership institute for the Murdock Charitable Trust in the Northwest;
- Lead a team in the design and implementation of a national healthcare philanthropy benchmarking initiative; and
- Designed, facilitated and directed the merger of two major health care organizations specializing in developmental disabilities to create a new, national organization
His other work in multiple not-for-profit service areas include: health care; higher and secondary education; human and social services; public and private foundations; fraternal benefit societies; and religious denominations along with their associated institutions. Several of his major clients are listed on the Fortune 500 roster.
In addition, Byron Tweeten has worked with major international not-for-profit organizations that provide emergency humanitarian and development aid throughout the world. Examples of these include:
- ECLOF, Geneva, Switzerland - one of the pioneer organizations in micro-credit for economic development;
- The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, Chicago, Illinois - a leader in facilitating global dialogue on key human and economic issues in the context of religious faith; and
- Augusta Victoria Hospital, Jerusalem - strategic planning and resource development for expansion and clinics for the new Palestinian state
Some of his other most significant client accomplishments include: a Lilly Endowment funded redesign and restructuring of eight Christian denomination seminaries into a single coordinated and managed system; the design, planning and organization of a consulting group that ultimately formed 250 fund-development departments for the largest nonprofit nursing home system in America; and the facilitation of a new vision and business model for a Fortune 500 listed fraternal benefit organization providing financial services to its members.
He has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences, seminars, and other events related to organizational change, transformation, and the development of resources to fund strategic growth. In March 2002, Jossey-Bass Publishers released his book, Transformational Boards, a publication that focuses on engaging boards in a time of organizational change.
In 2000, he was the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska. Mr. Tweeten graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor's of Music Education degree from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, and has a Master of Science degree in Educational Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Mr. Tweeten has offices in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Naples, Florida. When not traveling, he continues to participate in and receive lessons from the management of his family's third generation farm in Forest City, Iowa.
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