Consulting, Coaching, and Interim Leadership that Gets Your Mission Moving

If charity is not the end goal, what exactly is the nonprofit sector for?

If someone hands you a financial statement and you cannot tell the difference between a healthy fund balance and a red flag, what do you do? Some people go quiet and rubber-stamp whatever is put in front of them. Others go the opposite direction.

When an organization falls apart — whether from a board that lost its grip on governance, or an executive who ran the place into the ground, or some tangled combination of both — what do we actually owe each other?

I'm not here to argue that outside expertise is always theater. It genuinely isn't. And after years of watching organizations navigate this, I'd say there are some situations where the outside voice isn't just useful — it's the honest choice.

Vision, strategic planning, and tactics aren't competing concepts—they're complementary levels of a unified framework.

Leadership transitions are inevitable in nonprofit work. With proper planning, the right approach, and sometimes the strategic use of interim leadership, these transitions can strengthen rather than destabilize your organization.

One of the most critical strategic decisions nonprofit leaders face is determining what type of board will best serve their organization. The answer isn't one-size-fits-all, and often, the most effective approach involves elements of multiple models.

The very thing that draws people to nonprofit work—deep passion for a cause—can also become the source of an organization's greatest challenges.

2026 doesn't have to be about perfection. It's about progress, growth, and showing up for yourself in ways that actually matter.

Before You Start: Is a Nonprofit the Right Fit?

We've all been there. You announce a team retreat or all-hands meeting, and someone immediately responds: "Great! But PLEASE, no icebreakers."

As nonprofit leaders, we regularly pour time and resources into planning retreats for our organizations, yet rarely give ourselves even a fraction of that time to reflect on our leadership.

An estimated 80% of individual donation revenue comes from just 20% of donors. For some organizations, that ratio is even more concentrated at 90/10.

A lack of understanding about the basics of rewards can result in some unanticipated results causing your employees to not feel rewarded and even feel punished because of your reward programs.

Thanks to Harvard Business Review for this insightful look at strategic planning and where we can fail at reaching our goals: https://hbr.org/2017/11/many-strategies-fail-because-theyre-not-actually-strategies One major reason for the lack of action is that “new strategies” are often not strategies at all. A real strategy involves a clear set of choices that define what the firm is going to do and what it’s not going to do. Many strategies fail to get implemented, despite th

I’ll admit it, I’ve been on a board fundraising kick lately in the blog (here and here). I just think that if your nonprofit is going to...

Running a nonprofit is hard enough without tripping over preventable mistakes

Joining a nonprofit board should be a rewarding experience that allows you to leverage your skills for meaningful impact.

Even experienced professionals need nonprofit-specific training. No two boards operate the same way, and governance best practices differ significantly from corporate boardrooms.

Picture this: Your program director announces, "I'm not comfortable managing programs." Your finance director declares, "I'm not really into budgets." Your executive director admits, "Strategy isn't my thing." You'd be rightfully concerned. Yet when board members say, "I'm not comfortable asking for money," it's often met with a sympathetic nod and a pass. This double standard, as Dr. Kevin Dean of the Tennessee Nonprofit Network points out, is both perplexing and detrimental