We help YOU …
VISION, MISSION, AND VALUES
We help nonprofits discover or refresh their vision, mission, and values. Your vision helps you define the world you’re trying to create, your mission defines your unique role in reaching this vision, and your values describe what behaviors you expect from your team. These are foundational tools that can help your team make decisions and behave in ways that meet your expectations.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
We believe the best strategic plan is the one you’ll actually use. Some consultants are bogged down with a particular methodology or way of doing things, but we customize every strategic plan to meet where you’re at. Our goal is to help you define a 3-5 year plan for how you’ll direct your energy, focus, and resources as you grow. Best of all, your strategic plan can be executed with resources you actually have.
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS AND NONPROFIT MERGERS
Nonprofits are always looking for ways to do more together, and funders encourage nonprofits to explore how you can partner (for example, by jointly delivering services) or merge to provide clients with access to a wide array of services. We’re the go-to experts in Central Iowa for nonprofit partnership exploration, and we’ve developed a set of best practices and strategic conversations to guide nonprofits through this exploration process.
OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENTS
Though they’re missionally focused, nonprofits are businesses and face all of same pressures as any other business (and we’d argue a few more, as well!). Our Operational Assessment – often combined with our Board Assessment - deep dives into your practices around fundraising and stewardship, volunteer management, financial management, risk management, and back office functions like HR, IT, marketing, and facilities. We compare how you function compared to other nonprofits your size, and then help you decide where to focus now, within the next year, and over time due as you grow.
ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN AND GROWTH STRATEGIES
Growing things is hard. Scaling them as you grow is even harder. We help nonprofits anticipate growth and find ways to prepare for it. This often means adding more people or new roles, so we provide consultation around the best way to organize the team and their responsibilities as you grow in size and impact.
BOARD ASSESSMENTS AND TRAINING
We help boards function at their highest potential. Our Board Assessment - often combined with our Operational Assessment - investigates your current board practices and makes recommendations about how to transform your board’s approach to governance. We also offer a full-day board training called BOARDing School, which helps board members understand what’s expected of them and how they can further your mission.
Not seeing what you need?
Let’s chat. We like to think of ourselves as the people to call when you don’t know where to start. One of our partners described us as their “go-to for hairball projects”. In other words, we’re not scared off by much and love digging into complicated problems. If we don’t play in a space, we’ve developed a strong network of talented consultants with expertise in other areas. We can make a connection to get the conversation started.