Mission organizations have a particular communications problem: they are accountable to funders, to the people they serve, to staff who joined for the mission rather than the salary, and to a board that may contain all three.
Those audiences want different things, and the usual response of one message sent to everyone satisfies none of them.
Let me be direct about cost
Most nonprofit leaders who reach this page assume I am out of reach and close the tab. So, plainly:
- A single advisory session, to think something through with someone who doesn’t work there
- A half-day workshop with a team or a board
- A review of a plan you have already written, with honest notes
- Coaching for whoever is about to stand up in front of the community
These are real engagements, not loss leaders. Some of the most useful work I have done has been three hours long. If the budget is genuinely small, say so in the first message and we will find the shape that fits it or I will tell you it isn’t possible.
One large event cannot substitute for sustained engagement. Relationships get built by showing up repeatedly.
Where I am most useful
Nonprofits serving Indigenous communities, in particular, where the nonprofit is frequently not from the community it serves and knows it. Community campaigns that need consent rather than compliance. Groups in a funding transition. And the moment a nonprofit realizes its story stopped matching its work about four years ago.
Nonprofit leadership from the inside
I have served in nonprofit governance as well as corporate and tribal, which means I know what it is to sit in a board meeting where the mission is genuine, the reserves are three months, and somebody has just proposed a rebrand.
Tell me what you’re working on.
Including if the budget is small. I would rather have the conversation and be honest about fit than have you assume the answer. Public agencies & Land owners