Using consulting skills to raise millions for effective charities

We sat down with Anne Schulze to discuss her transition from a career in consulting to co-founding Effektiv Spenden, a giving platform for the German-speaking world that has raised almost 100 million euros for effective charities in 6 years!

Thanks for speaking with us, Anne! Can you tell us about your high-impact career journey?

I always knew I wanted to do “good in the world” with my career, especially given my position as a privileged, well-educated white woman. But I had studied business. So my first step towards leveraging my business background with my desire for social impact was to complete a master's thesis in international development, followed by a year of volunteering in Guatemala for a large German NGO. I still felt I needed some more career capital, which prompted me to join BCG before fully diving into the international development sector.

In 2015, I left BCG and started working at a family foundation in Germany. As the organization’s team and I strived to increase the foundation's focus on impact and effectiveness with the projects we funded, I became increasingly familiar with the broader global health, development, and the randomista movement. I even had the opportunity to collaborate with amazing organizations such as GiveWell and GiveDirectly while setting up a randomized control trial for a coffee smallholder training program with Nobel laureate Michael Kremer.

Which factors and resources inspired you to increase your impact?

Since 2015, I have been a supporter of the global health and development cause area as a donor. Specifically, the book Doing Good Better by Will MacAskill has always and still does resonate with me. I have always been a big fan of GiveWell-recommended charities because this is where I came from and reducing poverty has been on my mind since I was a teenager. (Note: I have expanded my donations to include additional cause areas such as climate change, animal welfare, and global catastrophic risks. And more recently, I have also come to realize the importance of protecting democracy - a cause area where I once thought voting would be enough. 

For a long time, my engagement centered around me being a donor and supporter of the principles, rather than working full-time in the space. But I probably knew for many years that there would be a next step. I just did not exactly know what and how, and resources like 80,000 Hours, Consultants for Impact, and the School for Moral Ambition did not exist yet. 

Zooming out a bit, when you first joined BCG, what were you hoping to get out of your time there?

Honestly, it wasn’t a super strategic choice. At the time, I felt I was playing to my strengths and had the vague idea that BCG would be a great first step in building career capital that I could leverage later in my career.

My instincts proved correct; BCG provided a steep learning curve, a competitive environment, and a range of projects and clients, which helped me better understand what I really wanted to focus on. An added benefit was the educational leave they granted me to do my Master of International Affairs at Columbia University. 

In what ways did your experience meet and differ from your expectations of working in consulting?

I had a great time at BCG. I met smart colleagues and clients, learned a variety of topics, and traveled to Latin America and Southeast Asia while on sabbaticals – experiences that also shaped my worldview and subsequent decisions. But I did not have the impact I was longing for, and it was mainly my inner compass that led me to leave. 

I never expected BCG to really be the place for me to do good in the world; I basically “used” consulting for skill-building, and stayed way longer than expected. I even anticipated it on day 1, mentioning to my colleagues that I would leave one day to work in the international development sector. It did eventually happen – it just took me 8 years. So, I finally left in 2013 to join a small team building an impact-oriented German family foundation. 

What was it that eventually pushed you to leave consulting and work full-time towards impact?

My active engagement ramped up when I co-founded Effektiv Spenden back in 2019 with some of my colleagues from the German family foundation. After realizing the growth potential for an effective giving platform in Germany (and now Switzerland and Austria), I quit my day job and joined Effektiv Spenden full-time as Managing Director in 2022. 

Could you tell us about Effektiv Spenden’s mission and theory of change?

In short, we want to contribute to a world that is doing good better. Effektiv Spenden is the preeminent German effective giving platform, active in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria (as of this year). We’re trying to promote effective giving by educating the wider public about cost-effectiveness and high-impact charities, and by raising more money for those organizations. We are currently raising money in five cause areas: global health and development, climate change, animal welfare, global catastrophic risks, and protecting democracy.

Effektiv Spenden is currently the most impactful giving platform in Germany, and we have been growing every year since our founding in 2019. Since our inception, we have raised almost 100M million euros for effective charities. By focusing on effective giving, we hope to reach many donors in the German-speaking world. Many people give, so why not give more effectively?

What are your goals as the founder and Managing Director of Effective Spenden?

Our main goal is to grow further. Much further. In 2025, we focused on growth even further by hiring our first Country Manager in Switzerland, finally launching Effektiv Spenden in Austria, more podcast ads, more PR, better donor communication, more events, and maybe even a small influencer campaign (to come). We are also partnering with Power for Democracies for their launch - the first charity evaluator in the field of protecting democracy. 

What does your day-to-day look like?

Currently, I am dividing my time between COO/CFO-related tasks (and we underwent a major tax audit this year), donor outreach and engagement, and ensuring that we focus on our strategic growth priorities while holding ourselves accountable. Externally, I spend most of my time engaging with the effective giving community and making the co-working space in Berlin a thriving hub for impact-driven professionals.

What do you think is most valuable about having a global network of value-aligned current and former consultants?

Having a network of like-minded people with similar ideas and backgrounds makes it easier to connect, whether to discuss alternative careers, effective giving, or high-impact work in consulting! I wish Consultants for Impact had existed when I was making these decisions to have a network for sparring, fostering, and challenging ideas, and to inspire and support each other. 

How do you think consultants' skill sets can best be leveraged for solving the world's most pressing problems?

Consulting skill sets can help nonprofits grow and deliver impactful results. Particularly, project management and general management skills are valuable; the bias towards action helps growing organizations to deliver (when sufficiently challenged and balanced).

As a whole, the non-profit sector at its current stage of maturity/development would benefit immensely from “doers” like consultants, leading to a higher impact in the long term.