Late this summer (2010), the Alliance for Children and Families embarked on a detailed study, funded by The Kresge Foundation, to explore whether the role of chief strategy officer (CSO) might serve to strengthen the capacity and enhance the social impact of our country’s most complex human service agencies.

The purpose of this article is to share our preliminary findings and the questions generated thus far by those findings.

The initial phases of the project involved extensive research on the concept and on the experience of both for-profit and nonprofit organizations that have experimented with the concept, with special attention to the differences between for-profit and nonprofit organizations.