In a small nonprofit, the Chief Operating Officer is often the person who makes the organization’s ambitions executable.

The title may vary. Some organizations use chief operating officer, deputy director, director of administration, vice president of operations, or simply operations director. But the underlying need is the same: someone must ensure that the organization has the systems, people, financial discipline, facilities, and internal coordination necessary to deliver on its mission.

A COO is typically the senior leader responsible for translating strategy into consistent daily performance. While the executive director or CEO may spend significant time on board leadership, fundraising, external partnerships, public visibility, and long-range strategy, the COO keeps the organization functioning from the inside out.

For small nonprofits, this role is especially consequential. Limited staffing and tight budgets mean operational weaknesses quickly become programmatic weaknesses. A delayed payroll process, incomplete grant report, broken intake system, poorly managed facility, unfilled staff vacancy, or unclear internal procedure can directly affect the people the organization exists to serve.

The COO’s work is not merely administrative. It is mission-critical.

Operations Are the Foundation

At its core, the COO is responsible for building and maintaining an organization that works reliably.

That includes the practical infrastructure behind nonprofit services: internal procedures, staffing systems, technology, calendars, contracts, purchasing, data practices, facilities, and cross-department communication. In a small organization, these responsibilities may be handled by a single senior leader rather than a large operations department.

The COO asks questions that can seem routine but are essential to organizational health:

• Do staff members understand who is responsible for each key task?

• Are financial approvals clear and consistently followed?

• Can the organization accurately report its services, outcomes, and expenditures?

• Are grant-funded activities being carried out as promised?

• Do employees have the tools, training, and supervision they need?

• Is the organization prepared when a major staff member leaves, a funder changes requirements, or a facility problem interrupts services?

Strong operations do not create headlines, but weak operations can derail even the most compelling mission. The COO helps build the structure that allows staff and programs to perform well over time.

Moving Strategy From Paper to Practice

Many nonprofits develop strategic plans, hold planning retreats, identify priorities, and set ambitious goals. The difficult work begins after the plan is approved.

A COO often becomes the organization’s chief implementation leader. Working with the executive director and other senior staff, the COO converts broad priorities into work plans, timelines, assignments, performance measures, and regular accountability conversations.

For example, a strategic plan may call for expanding services into a neighboring county. The COO’s role is to turn that aspiration into operational reality:

• What staffing model will support the expansion?

• What will the new service cost?

• Is additional office, program, or meeting space needed?

• What technology, transportation, insurance, contracts, or reporting systems are required?

• How will leadership measure whether the expansion is succeeding?

• What current work must change—or stop—to make room for the new initiative?

This is where a capable COO adds enormous value. Strategy is not simply a statement of intent. It is a set of choices about resources, sequencing, capacity, and accountability.

The COO helps the organization make those choices deliberately.

Financial Stewardship and Organizational Discipline

In many small nonprofits, financial oversight is shared among the executive director, finance staff or contractors, treasurer, board finance committee, and outside accountant. Even so, the COO frequently plays a central role in connecting financial information to operational decisions.

That includes helping develop the annual budget, monitoring revenue and expenses, identifying emerging financial risks, managing contracts and purchasing, and ensuring that grant requirements are incorporated into day-to-day practice.

A COO should understand more than whether the organization is “on budget.” They should be able to help leadership answer more useful questions:

• Are unrestricted revenues sufficient to support core administrative capacity?

• Are programs being delivered within the costs assumed in grant proposals and contracts?

• Is the organization carrying too much financial risk in a single funder, contract, or revenue stream?

• Are restricted funds being used correctly and documented adequately?

• Is cash flow stable, especially when reimbursement-based grants or government contracts are involved?

• Are leaders making staffing and program decisions based on timely, accurate information?

Good financial management is not separate from mission delivery. It protects the organization’s ability to continue serving people tomorrow, next year, and during the next funding cycle.

For a small nonprofit, the COO often helps ensure that mission commitments and financial capacity remain aligned.

Program Performance and Service Delivery

Programs are the reason most nonprofits exist. Yet program quality does not sustain itself.

The COO helps ensure that services are delivered consistently, resources are allocated appropriately, and operational barriers do not prevent staff from serving clients, members, students, residents, or other beneficiaries effectively.

This does not mean that the COO must personally supervise every program. In some organizations, program directors or deputy directors carry that responsibility. But the COO should maintain an organization-wide view of performance, capacity, and risk.

That perspective can be especially useful when programs compete for limited staff time, space, funding, technology, vehicles, or administrative support.

A COO can help the organization see patterns that may otherwise remain hidden. For instance, one program may appear highly successful because it serves many people, but it may be relying on unsustainable staff workloads or underfunded administrative support. Another program may have modest participation but generate reliable unrestricted revenue, strengthen donor relationships, or meet an urgent community need.

Operational leadership helps the organization evaluate performance in context rather than relying on a single measure of success.

Leading People and Culture

Small nonprofit teams are often close-knit, mission-driven, and deeply committed. Those qualities can be powerful strengths. They can also create challenges when roles are unclear, communication is inconsistent, or staff members feel expected to carry too much without adequate support.

The COO plays a major role in creating a workplace where people can do good work without burning out.

Depending on the organization’s structure, this may include supervising department leaders, managing hiring and onboarding, improving job descriptions, establishing performance expectations, supporting professional development, and strengthening internal communication.

Perhaps most importantly, the COO helps shape organizational culture.

Culture is not a slogan on a wall. It is reflected in how leaders communicate priorities, how decisions are made, how staff members are treated, how conflict is handled, and whether expectations are applied fairly. In a small nonprofit, employees notice quickly when leadership values transparency, consistency, respect, and accountability—or when those values are absent.

A strong COO helps create a culture where staff understand the mission, know what success looks like, and have confidence that internal systems support rather than frustrate their work.

Board Partnership and Accountability

The board governs. Staff manage. In practice, however, the relationship between governance and operations requires ongoing communication and trust.

The COO often helps provide the board with the information it needs to fulfill its responsibilities. This can include operational dashboards, financial reports, risk updates, program-performance information, policy recommendations, and implementation updates on strategic priorities.

The COO may attend board or committee meetings, particularly those involving finance, audit, facilities, human resources, risk management, or strategic planning. They can also help ensure that board decisions are translated into practical next steps.

This role requires judgment. The COO should support transparency without overwhelming board members with unnecessary operational detail. The goal is to give the board a clear, accurate view of organizational performance while preserving the appropriate boundary between governance and management.

For small nonprofits, that balance can be difficult—but it is essential.

Development, Compliance, and Risk

Fundraising may be led by an executive director, chief development officer, development director, or engaged board members. But operations and development are closely connected.

A grant proposal is not simply a fundraising document. It is often a promise about staffing, services, outcomes, timelines, data collection, financial controls, and reporting. The COO helps ensure the organization can fulfill that promise.

This may include grant administration, contract compliance, reporting coordination, data management, budgeting support, and internal monitoring of deliverables. In organizations with government grants or service contracts, the COO may also be critical to maintaining the documentation and controls required for reimbursement and audit purposes.

The same is true for risk management and compliance. Small nonprofits face real exposure related to employment practices, insurance, client privacy, data security, facilities, transportation, contracts, financial controls, and regulatory obligations. Not every organization needs a large compliance department, but every organization needs someone who understands its risks and makes sure they are addressed.

The COO is often that person.

Technology, Facilities, and the Practical Work of Service

Technology and facilities can be easy to overlook until they fail.

An outdated database can undermine fundraising and outcome reporting. Inadequate cybersecurity can expose sensitive client, donor, and employee information. A poorly maintained building can disrupt programming, create safety concerns, and damage public confidence. A missing policy or outdated vendor agreement can produce costly problems at the worst possible time.

In a small nonprofit, the COO may be responsible for managing many of these practical issues directly or through vendors and staff. That can include information systems, software selection, data practices, office and program space, vehicles, equipment, insurance, maintenance, and continuity planning.

These responsibilities may not feel as visible as program delivery or fundraising, but they determine whether the organization can operate safely, efficiently, and credibly.

The Operational Backbone

The most effective COOs are not merely task managers. They are organizational integrators.

They connect the budget to the strategic plan. They connect staffing decisions to program capacity. They connect grant requirements to operational processes. They connect board expectations to staff implementation. They connect the organization’s stated values to its everyday practices.

In a small nonprofit, the COO may wear many hats. But the purpose of the role remains clear: to create the conditions in which mission-driven work can succeed.

A strong executive director can articulate a compelling vision, build external relationships, and inspire support. A strong board can provide governance, accountability, and strategic direction. But neither can fully succeed without an organization capable of carrying out its commitments.

That is the COO’s central contribution.

The specific title and responsibilities will vary by mission, budget, staffing model, and organizational maturity. Some small nonprofits may not yet need a formal COO position. Others may need an operations leader long before they can afford the title.

Whatever the structure, nonprofit leaders should recognize the underlying need: someone must own the work of building organizational capacity.

When that responsibility is clear, well-supported, and connected to the organization’s mission, the nonprofit becomes more resilient, more accountable, and better positioned to create lasting community impact.

Our readers come from small, agile organizations making dramatic and meaningful improvements in the places they call home. These small to midsize nonprofits deliver essential services, strengthen families, support vulnerable populations, build community capacity, and often solve problems long before they reach the desks of government officials or larger institutions.

But 2026 is not a year for simply maintaining the status quo.

Nonprofits are facing a complicated operating environment: rising costs, intense competition for grants and donors, continuing workforce pressures, changing expectations for transparency, and a technology landscape moving faster than many organizations can comfortably absorb. At the same time, new tools—including artificial intelligence—can help smaller organizations expand their capacity if they are adopted thoughtfully and governed responsibly.

The strategic challenge is not to pursue every new idea, platform, or funding opportunity. It is to identify the investments and operating practices that will make the organization more durable, more trusted, and more effective.

Today, we will explore eight consequential strategic trends affecting small to midsize nonprofit organizations in 2026—and how leaders can use them to strengthen mission impact.

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Moving From Data Collection to Decision-Ready Insight

For several years, nonprofit leaders have heard that they need to become more “data-driven.” In 2026, the expectation is more practical: collect the information that helps the organization make better decisions, improve services, demonstrate results, or meet legitimate compliance requirements.

Funders, boards, and donors increasingly want to know what changed because of the organization’s work. How many people were served is important, but it is rarely enough. Leaders should also understand the outcomes participants experienced, the programs producing the strongest results, the places where people are falling through the cracks, and the ways service demand reveals emerging community needs.

For a small organization, the goal is not a sophisticated data warehouse. It is a manageable performance system built around a small number of meaningful outcomes, a reliable process for collecting information, and a routine for reviewing what the data says.

The most useful systems combine numbers with human experience. A housing-support program, for example, may track the number of households stabilized, eviction filings avoided, referrals completed, and follow-up outcomes. It should also capture participant feedback about barriers that numbers alone cannot explain.

Data should serve the mission—not create a reporting burden that pulls staff away from the people the organization exists to help.

Treating AI as a Governed Capacity Tool

Artificial intelligence has moved quickly from novelty to everyday workplace tool. Many nonprofit staff members are already using generative AI to draft emails, summarize meetings, create outreach materials, develop grant-writing outlines, organize research, and prepare first drafts of policies or reports. Sector reporting indicates that AI use is now widespread, while formal governance and policy development remain much less common.

For small nonprofits, AI can be valuable precisely because staff capacity is limited. It can reduce time spent on repetitive administrative work and give teams a stronger starting point for communication, research, planning, and internal documentation.

But nonprofits should not treat AI as a substitute for professional judgment, lived experience, confidentiality, or accountability.

Every organization using AI should establish a basic policy identifying which tools are permitted for organizational work, what information may never be entered into a public AI system, who reviews AI-generated content before it is shared externally, and when staff need to disclose that AI assisted with a draft, analysis, or image. The policy should also establish how the organization will check for inaccuracies, bias, fabricated citations, and harmful recommendations, as well as who approves AI-enabled systems or vendor contracts.

The most immediate rule is simple: confidential client, donor, employee, health, legal, financial, and case-management information should never be entered into an unapproved AI platform.

In 2026, responsible AI use is a leadership and governance issue, not simply a technology issue. Boards should understand where AI is being used, what information is at risk, and what safeguards are in place.

Rebuilding Fundraising Around Retention and Trust

The fundraising conversation has often focused on donor acquisition: finding more names, growing the email list, expanding social-media reach, and attracting first-time gifts. Those activities matter, but retaining existing supporters may be the more urgent challenge.

Recent nonprofit fundraising reporting points to persistently weak donor retention, with overall retention commonly near the low-30-percent range. In practical terms, many organizations are losing most first-time donors after a single gift.

That creates a costly cycle. Organizations spend time and money attracting supporters, only to lose them before they become recurring donors, volunteers, advocates, or major-gift prospects.

A sound 2026 fundraising strategy should put as much energy into relationship-building as it does into acquisition. Donors should receive prompt and personal acknowledgement, clear explanations of what their gifts made possible, and credible stories of progress that respect the dignity of the people being served. Organizations should communicate differently with a first-time $25 donor, a longtime monthly supporter, a volunteer, and a major contributor. They should make recurring giving visible and easy, while giving supporters meaningful ways to participate beyond writing a check.

Trust is the central asset. Donors are more likely to continue giving when they understand the mission, see credible evidence of impact, feel respected, and believe the organization is being honest about both progress and challenges.

Building Revenue Resilience, Not Just Revenue Growth

“Diversification” remains one of the most common words in nonprofit strategy, but it is often used too casually. Having many small revenue sources does not automatically make an organization financially secure. The real question is whether the organization has a durable revenue model aligned with its mission, capacity, and risk tolerance.

Traditional grants and charitable contributions remain vital. But many organizations are evaluating a broader mix of individual giving, recurring donor programs, foundation and corporate grants, government contracts and reimbursements, fee-for-service programs, training and technical-assistance services, mission-connected earned-income ventures, sponsorships, and reserve or endowment income where appropriate.

The strongest approach is usually not to eliminate dependence on grants. It is to avoid dependence on any single grant, donor, government contract, or fundraising event.

Leadership teams should have a clear understanding of the share of revenue provided by their largest funders, the restrictions attached to that revenue, the programs that are underfunded, the costs grants do not cover, and the level of available operating reserves.

“No money, no mission” remains true. But in 2026, the more complete statement is this: no reliable operating model, no sustainable mission.

Making Technology and Cybersecurity Board-Level Priorities

Technology is no longer simply an administrative support function. It affects fundraising, service delivery, financial controls, communications, remote work, records management, and public trust.

For small organizations, the temptation is to adopt tools one at a time: a donor database, a volunteer platform, a survey tool, a messaging application, an online-payment processor, and a cloud-drive account. Over time, this can produce a patchwork system with duplicated data, inconsistent processes, weak access controls, and unnecessary subscription costs.

The better approach is to establish a practical core technology environment that supports financial management and payment approval, donor and constituent relationship management, program or case-management data where applicable, secure file storage, internal collaboration, online giving, donor acknowledgement, and basic reporting.

Cybersecurity must be part of this conversation. As organizations rely more heavily on cloud systems, digital payments, and remote access, they face increased exposure to phishing, ransomware, account compromise, and fraudulent payment requests. Current nonprofit guidance consistently emphasizes multifactor authentication, software updates, strong access controls, staff training, backup practices, and an incident-response plan.

One simple but powerful control is requiring independent verification before changing bank-account information, issuing an unusual payment, or responding to an urgent request that appears to come from an executive. AI-enabled voice and email impersonation make this increasingly important.

Cybersecurity is not merely an IT matter. It is a fiduciary responsibility.

Designing Work for Retention, Accountability, and Service Quality

Hybrid work is no longer merely a pandemic-era adaptation. Flexible arrangements remain part of how many nonprofit employers recruit and retain talent, especially for administrative, development, finance, communications, and leadership functions.

Yet nonprofit work is not fully virtual. Many organizations provide direct services requiring face-to-face relationships, community presence, field work, facility operations, crisis response, or coordination with public systems. The practical question is not whether remote work is good or bad. It is which work can be performed flexibly without compromising service quality, collaboration, accountability, equity, or organizational culture.

Small nonprofits should define which roles require in-person presence and why, while establishing clear expectations for responsiveness, documentation, meetings, client access, and performance. They should ensure remote and onsite staff have equitable access to information, development opportunities, and leadership visibility. Regular opportunities for connection, learning, and problem-solving remain important, as do realistic workloads and capable supervisors.

The quality of internal operations eventually appears in the quality of service delivery. Staff retention, role clarity, competent supervision, and healthy communication are mission-critical investments.

Strengthening Partnerships and Community Infrastructure

Collaboration remains one of the most effective ways for small nonprofits to extend their reach without trying to become everything to everyone.

Partnerships can help organizations coordinate services, reduce duplication, reach new populations, compete for larger grants, share back-office capacity, strengthen advocacy, and respond to complex community problems that no single organization can solve alone.

But collaboration should be strategic, not ceremonial.

A productive partnership begins with a clear reason to work together. It should identify the problem that can be addressed collectively, clarify who has decision-making authority, define what each organization will contribute, and establish how data, credit, funding, and accountability will be handled.

The best partnerships are built around a shared definition of the problem, complementary roles, written expectations, regular communication among people empowered to make decisions, and a practical way to resolve conflict. Their success should be measured by improved community outcomes, not merely by the number of meetings held.

For many organizations, deeper relationships with local government, schools, libraries, health systems, workforce agencies, faith communities, employers, and peer nonprofits will be central to delivering more coordinated and accessible services.

Linking Direct Service With Advocacy and Public Trust

Nonprofits often see needs before they appear in public data, policy debates, or budget documents. They hear directly from families navigating food insecurity, older adults facing isolation, tenants at risk of displacement, workers seeking training, and residents unable to access transportation, care, or benefits.

That frontline perspective is valuable. It helps communities understand not only what services are needed, but why the need exists.

Advocacy does not have to mean partisan activity. It can include educating policymakers, explaining community conditions, sharing anonymized program data, participating in public meetings, supporting evidence-based policy changes, and helping residents understand how to engage with public systems.

In a more polarized environment, public trust must be earned deliberately. Transparency about finances, funding sources, governance, outcomes, and limitations is one of the clearest ways nonprofits can strengthen credibility.

Organizations should be able to explain, in plain language, the problem they address, whom they serve, what services they provide, what results they are achieving, how they are governed, how funds are used, and what barriers prevent them from doing more.

This is not merely a communications exercise. It is part of the organization’s public accountability.

A Practical 2026 Agenda

Small and midsize nonprofits do not need to launch eight major initiatives at once. In fact, attempting to do so may weaken the organization by scattering leadership attention and staff capacity.

A sensible agenda begins with strengthening the core: clarifying outcomes, stabilizing finances, improving essential systems, and protecting sensitive data. It continues by deepening relationships with donors, staff, partners, and the public through clear communication, credible reporting, and meaningful engagement. Finally, it requires adopting technology with discipline, using AI and digital tools to reduce administrative burden rather than create new risks or substitute for human judgment.

The organizations most likely to thrive will combine innovation with operational discipline. They will use technology without losing the human relationships at the center of their work. They will measure results without confusing metrics for mission. And they will build financial, organizational, and community resilience before the next disruption forces them to do so.

Small nonprofits have always succeeded because they are close to their communities, responsive to changing needs, and willing to act when larger systems move slowly. Those strengths remain powerful. The task is to pair them with sharper strategy, stronger governance, and sustainable execution.

Which of these trends is most immediate for your organization: AI governance, donor retention, financial resilience, workforce capacity, partnership development, cybersecurity, or impact measurement? Leave a comment in the discussion, and we will explore the most relevant topics in future editions of this newsletter.

I recently interviewed for a new position. I didn’t get the job, and it would be inappropriate for me to go into detail about the discussion. But throughout the conversation, I realized it had gone well. The interview was scheduled for sixty minutes and ran closer to seventy-five. It was fruitful and helpful, largely because I was able to explain myself through my values rather than my résumé.

Most job interviews ask questions that, frankly, aren’t very instructive. It’s always some version of describing a tough time or a moment of success. But even working through those familiar questions, I realized that the successes and disappointments themselves aren’t what matter most. It’s the values behind those answers that carry the weight. For me, those values are simple.

First, I am committed to telling the truth. When we are honest with ourselves and with our team members, we get better conversations and better solutions to our problems. When we start to deceive or obfuscate, we are invariably shooting at a moving target, and we stop treating each other with respect and dignity.

Second, I am committed to following the law. From a nonprofit bylaw to a federal statute, leaders exist to ensure that the rules put in place are actually followed. We may not always like them, but we are bound by professional ethics to follow them. We can advocate for change, but we live and work in the regulatory environment we have, not the one we wish we had.

Third, I am committed to not gossiping. I am in a position where I need to keep confidences, and I am willing to do that. There is a lot of wisdom in the simple statement, “that is not my story to tell.”

Finally, as a nonprofit professional, it’s ultimately the board’s direction I follow, not my own. The organization is held in trust by the public through its board. They are responsible for setting direction. They need help, and they need guidance, and I am glad to provide it. But at the end of the day, the responsibility is theirs, not mine.

I didn’t get the job. But I left the conversation more confident in what I believe, and why I believe it — and that’s not nothing.

Staff meetings are the bane of existence for more than a few non-profit executive directors. They occupy time on our calendars, and even while we sit and talk, we often walk away feeling like we didn’t get much value out of any of it.

But staff meetings are also great mileposts for self-reflection. If we feel these gatherings aren’t working, we should ask whether we’re doing something as leaders that sabotages them. Are we dominating the conversation too much? Are we not participating enough?

One of the better books on organizational management is Traction by Gino Wickman, which introduces the “Entrepreneurial Operating System.” It’s written for people in the for-profit world building their businesses, but I’ve found portions of it genuinely useful.

One section describes the “Level 10” meeting, Wickman’s term for the staff meeting. In a Level 10 meeting, time is set aside to review performance data, revisit goals and objectives, discuss what customers are saying, work through a to-do list, and identify, discuss, and solve problems.

When I tried applying that structure to my own shop, I kept running into the same wall. Conversations would devolve into debates about why we measured certain items or why we’d set certain goals in the first place. It got frustrating fast.

Enter the Shortest Agenda Ever

Our staff meetings still run thirty to forty minutes, but the agenda is three lines.

Line 1: Opening Prayer

We’re a faith-based organization, and this matters. It focuses us and prepares us for the meeting ahead.

Line 2: Things We Can Celebrate

This is, without a doubt, the highlight of the meeting. I always start by talking about the good work we’re doing and who went above and beyond. I’ve learned that success is infectious: once I start pointing out positive contributions, other participants want to chime in too, highlighting teammates’ efforts and sharing how the people we serve have expressed appreciation.

Line 3: Challenges I Can Help Solve

I ask the team to name the problems they’re seeing, explain why each one matters, and then open it up to the group to help solve it. Maybe someone is struggling with the logistics of moving food pantry products from one site to another, and we need to rework a van schedule. Getting these problems out in the open, where everyone has a chance to own part of the solution, builds trust and camaraderie.

I always speak last in this section, for two reasons. First, if I’ve spotted a problem, there’s a good chance others have too, and I want to draw that out of the team rather than announce it myself. I want them to grow more confident not just in naming problems, but in trusting each other to help solve them. Second, I’ve learned that my problems aren’t automatically the organization’s most important problems. The biggest issues are usually the ones felt and seen on the front lines. Giving front-line team members time to identify, discuss, and solve those problems means more to them than listening to me lecture about what I’m noticing.

It’s Not Level 10, But It Works

Our meeting isn’t a Level 10 meeting by Wickman’s definition, but it’s still highly effective. In a loose way, we still touch on goals, customer needs, strategic initiatives, tasks, and problem-solving, just in a format that draws the team out rather than talking at them.

Maybe the secret sauce is the agenda itself. With only three items listed, you’d expect a lot of blank space. You’d be wrong.

Each copy of the agenda has two columns with lines for participants to write on: one labeled “Things We Can Celebrate,” the other “Challenges I Can Help Solve.” Team members jot notes in these columns to help them think through and reflect on what’s discussed.

As for me, I file the sheet away afterward, and just like that, I have a complete record of the meeting and everything covered. It’s a handy tool to have on hand if the need ever arises.

I remembering spending a couple of days at a retreat, an opportunity to talk to other nonprofit leaders about our shops. It was a valuable opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and reflect on how we navigate the challenges of leading nonprofit organizations in healthy, sustainable ways.

On the final morning, we gathered to share what we were taking away from our time together. One leader—a young woman who runs a nonprofit—spoke about a dream she has carried for a long time, but has been hesitant to pursue.

That caught me off guard.

The night before, over dinner, we had gone around the table sharing something from our past that wouldn’t appear on a résumé but helped shape who we are. The best I could offer was my brief stint as the “guess your age/weight/birth month” guy at an amusement park.

Her story was different.

She shared that she is a world traveler—not in the casual, tourist sense, but in the truest form. She has spent time in more than twenty countries, many of which most people would never consider visiting: Sudan, Pakistan, and others like them. She even lived in Egypt for a period of time while raising young children.

If there was anyone at that table who had demonstrated courage, resilience, and grit, it was her.

So when she said she was hesitant to pursue her dream, it didn’t just surprise me—it challenged me. How could someone who had navigated some of the most complex and unfamiliar corners of the world feel held back from stepping into what she was clearly capable of doing?

I could feel the response building before I had fully formed the words.

When she finished, I spoke up. This isn’t a perfect recollection, but it’s close to what I said:

Do the damn thing.

That thing inside you—it’s not going away. It will keep calling, whether you answer it or not.

Ignore it, and it won’t quietly fade. It will persist. It will nag. It will demand your attention until you either give it the work it deserves or spend your energy trying to suppress it.

We like to think we possess our dreams. I’m not so sure that’s true. More often, our dreams possess us. We don’t always choose them—they choose us.

And the world does care about your dream.

It cares because you see something others don’t. You’ve identified a gap, a problem, or a possibility that feels personal to you. In doing so, you’ve already taken the hardest step: you’ve accepted some level of responsibility for it.

If everything felt complete and whole, the dream wouldn’t exist. The fact that it does is evidence that something—at least from your vantage point—is not as it should be.

If you’re searching for meaning, start there.

Do the thing.

Because when you finally act on it—when you put it into motion—it may or may not change the world in some sweeping, visible way.

But it will change you.

And in changing you, it inevitably changes the world around you.

Do the damn thing.

I was in a meeting at a local community center with a couple dozen of the community’s most dedicated leaders — some from government, others from foundations, others from front-line nonprofits. These are the environments where I feel most at home. My experience in local government as a former elected official and in the nonprofit world as the leader of one of the largest nonprofits in my home county lets me keep both feet firmly planted in both worlds. I know the people, I know their work, and I speak their language.

Near the end of the meeting, a local foundation leader mentioned the development of a potential new nonprofit and said, almost in passing, “We fund over thirty-one feeding projects in this county.”

The meeting moved on, but I couldn’t.

Thirty-one. I live in a county of about 108,000 people — not large, but not exactly rural either. To put that number in context: there are more feeding programs in this county than supermarkets, grocery stores, and maybe even gas stations combined. That’s a lot.

Thirty-One Programs and Not a Drop to Drink

Food insecurity is a pressing issue here. Supermarkets and grocery stores exist, but they’re largely inaccessible to people without a vehicle, and our county’s public transit doesn’t run on a fixed-route system. So the need is real — I’m not questioning that.

What I kept turning over in my mind was how a funder decides which of those 31 programs to support. My gut says that nearly every feeding program that asked for money from this foundation got it. Maybe I’m wrong, but 31 feels less like a curated portfolio and more like an open door.

And if we’re honest: are all 31 programs serving the same number of people? Of course not. Are some serving special populations? Perhaps. Are some serving overlapping ones? Almost certainly.

So how do funders decide? Is it easier — politically — to fund everyone? Do the metrics that executive directors labor over in year-end performance reports actually influence anything?

Price’s Law in Action

I’ve written about Price’s Law here before. Briefly: half the output in any system comes from the square root of its participants. Think of a 25-man baseball roster — collectively, the top five players account for most of the team’s hits. Got sixteen spices on your rack? You probably reach for four of them most of the time.

Why would feeding programs be any different? With 31 programs, roughly five of them are doing the lion’s share of the work. What about the other 26? Are they funded out of convenience? Out of relationships? It’s hard to argue they’re being funded strictly on effectiveness.

Are We Funding for Effectiveness?

If five of those 31 programs are producing half the results, are they receiving half the money? I honestly don’t know — but I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is yes. The real problem is what happens to the other half: spread across 26 organizations we know, statistically, aren’t performing at the same level. Are those checks calculated investments in the community, or participation trophies?

A better approach might be to direct 80–90% of dollars allocated for a specific activity to the top-performing organizations, and reserve the remainder for new or innovative programs that emerge over time.

I know it sounds harsh to say that 26 programs shouldn’t be funded. And there may be legitimate arguments for occasionally supporting a less-efficient program — a new model worth incubating, a population no one else is reaching. I also understand that funding a wide array of organizations lets foundations demonstrate broad community investment. That’s a real consideration.

But the workhorse organizations — the ones that have shown up year after year delivering real results — aren’t well-served in a participation-trophy world.

Funders should be in the business of funding programs … not organizations.

A misfit, by definition, is someone badly adjusted — set apart because of their habits or behaviors. It’s a terribly harsh word. But sitting in that classroom, surrounded by nonprofit professionals from wildly different walks of life, I began to wonder if we weren’t misfits in the most beautiful sense: people set apart not by failure, but brought together by a path no one could have predicted.

At my table sat a woman who had never left her hometown. She attended the local community college, found her footing there, and eventually joined their development office. Next to her was someone I suspected had dropped out of high school — until a nonprofit stepped in, changed her trajectory, and somewhere along the way she became one of them. Then there was the stay-at-home mom, quietly searching for something more, something she couldn’t quite name but somehow knew was out there. And then there was me: the dyed-in-the-wool government bureaucrat who swore — loudly, repeatedly — that he would never work in the nonprofit sector.

God and a few stubborn people had other plans.

Who Signed Up For This?

No one in that room — not one person, not even the facilitators — had mapped out this life for themselves. We were nonprofit professionals gathered for a professional development seminar, and while our credentials varied wildly, the invisible thread connecting us was undeniable: none of us started here on purpose.

My mind drifted to what these people imagined for themselves back in high school. Teachers, maybe. Lawyers. Doctors. Something in business or finance. Nonprofits? Not a chance. I don’t think the word even crossed my lips until I was halfway through college.

I’ll admit I had a small advantage. I majored in Urban Affairs — a field built around communities and how they function. I took nonprofit management courses in college. I worked hard enough to land a position that funded a Master’s in Public Administration. Through that program, I met people running nonprofits or dreaming of it. I watched them with quiet admiration and bewilderment in equal measure. Changing the world on near-poverty wages didn’t sound like a plan. It sounded like a sacrifice I wasn’t sure I was willing to make.

Yet here I am.

Life Brought Us Here

I’m writing this with someone specific in mind. Someone who, like me, didn’t grow up dreaming of board meetings and grant reports and budget shortfalls. Someone who is arriving at this work through a series of turns that probably looked more like stumbling than strategy — and who carries the weight of it more quietly than most people realize.

There’s a sermon line I’ve heard more than once: God doesn’t call the prepared — He prepares the called. I can’t fully defend the theology, but I understand the truth buried in it. You don’t wait until you’re ready. You step forward, and readiness follows. Or it doesn’t come at all, and you learn to move without it.

That’s not a failure of preparation. That’s just the nature of this work.

Falling Into Place — Or Just Falling?

Fundraising. Budgeting. Personnel. Operations. Capital planning. Board relationships. Even in the quietest seasons, carrying one or two of these well is a real accomplishment. As a nonprofit leader, you’re expected to carry all of them — together, always, without dropping what matters most.

And underneath all of that, there is often a voice. A quiet, persistent, exhausting voice that says: you’re not enough. Not prepared enough. Not experienced enough. Not strong enough for this particular moment. I know that voice. I’ve heard it in my own head more times than I’d like to admit. I’ve heard it in the voices of colleagues who pulled me aside, away from the meeting room, and whispered with genuine fear, I don’t know if I can do this.

You are not alone in that feeling. Not even close.

Just Be Present

There’s something a football coach once said about a gifted rookie who spent most of his time hurt and sidelined: “Availability is more important than ability. If you’re always on the bench, you’re not helping the team in the way you should.”

I think about that a lot in this work.

You are in the game. You showed up — to that seminar, to this role, to a room full of people who never planned to be there either. And you’re still showing up, even on the days when it costs you something real.

The bumps will come. They already have. The curves will surprise you. But so will the moments that remind you exactly why you’re here.

No one needs you to be perfect. They need you to be present.

And you — you are exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Staff meetings are the bane of existence for more than a few nonprofit executive directors. They occupy precious calendar time, and too often we walk away wondering what we actually accomplished.

But staff meetings can also serve as useful mileposts for self-reflection. If these gatherings aren’t working, it’s worth asking whether we’re part of the problem. Are we dominating the conversation? Not participating enough? The honest answer matters.

One of the better books on organizational management is Traction by Gino Wickman, which introduces the Entrepreneurial Operating System. While it’s written for the for-profit world, I’ve found meaningful portions of it applicable to nonprofit leadership.

One section focuses on what Wickman calls the “Level Ten” meeting — a structured agenda covering performance data, goals and objectives, customer feedback, to-do lists, and problem-solving. When I tried to apply it at my own organization, it consistently broke down. Conversations would devolve into debates about why we measured certain things or whether our goals were even the right ones. It became more frustrating than productive.

Enter the Shortest Agenda Ever

Our staff meetings still run thirty to forty minutes, but the agenda is now just three lines.

Line 1: Opening Prayers
We are a faith-based organization, and this matters. It focuses us and prepares us for the meeting ahead.

Line 2: Things We Can Celebrate
This is the highlight of every meeting. I always open by recognizing good work and calling out team members who went above and beyond. What I’ve learned is that success is infectious — once I start, others naturally join in, pointing out positive contributions and sharing how the people we serve have expressed appreciation. It sets a powerful tone.

Line 3: Challenges I Can Help Solve
I ask our team to share the problems they’re encountering, always framing it around why the issue matters to the team — then I open it up for the group to solve together. Maybe someone is struggling with the logistics of getting food pantry products from one location to another and we need to reschedule a van. Getting these challenges out in the open, where everyone has a chance to own a solution, builds genuine trust and camaraderie.

I always speak last in this section, for two reasons. First, if I’ve noticed a problem, there’s a good chance others have too — and I want to draw that awareness out of my team. I want them to grow confident not just in identifying problems, but in relying on each other to solve them.

Second, I’ve learned that my problems aren’t automatically the most pressing ones facing the organization. The issues that matter most are usually the ones felt on the front lines. Giving frontline team members the time and space to identify, discuss, and solve those problems means far more to them than a top-down lecture from me.

It’s Not Level Ten — But It Works

Our meeting doesn’t follow Wickman’s Level Ten format, but it remains highly effective. In a looser way, we’re still covering goals, customer needs, strategic priorities, action items, and issues to resolve — just in a way that naturally draws the team out rather than working through a rigid checklist.

Perhaps the real secret is the agenda itself. With only three items, you might assume there’s nothing to hold the meeting together. But there’s actually a practical structure underneath it. Each printed agenda has two columns with writing lines — one for Things We Can Celebrate and one for Challenges I Can Help Solve. Team members write notes in those columns before and during the meeting, which helps them reflect on what they want to share.

For me, it also doubles as a complete meeting record. I file the sheet away and have a running log of what was discussed — a surprisingly handy reference when I need it later.

What do you want to work on?

Is there a piece of information you want to know that maybe I can help you? Shoot me an email at pinnaclestrategiesltd@gmail.com and as a paid subscriber, you are entitled to a free one-hour consulting session. We can sit down and talk and figure out where we can take you and your organization, including a deeper discussion on logic models!

Thanks for subscribing and be well!

Bill

The governance of nonprofit organizations involves a complex interplay of legal, ethical, and operational considerations. At the heart of this framework are three foundational principles — the duties of care, loyalty, and obedience — collectively known as the CLO Doctrine. These duties provide essential guidance to board members in their exercise of stewardship and decision-making, ensuring that an organization’s mission is pursued with rigor and integrity while preserving the trust of the public, its beneficiaries, and its donors.

Duty of Care

The duty of care obligates board members to exercise prudent and reasonable judgment in the governance and oversight of organizational affairs. This standard requires that decisions be informed, deliberate, and reflective of all reasonably available information. Board members are expected to attend meetings consistently, review financial and operational reports thoroughly, and develop a substantive understanding of the organization’s strategic position.

In practice, this duty requires an active participation in strategic planning processes, rigorous oversight of financial performance, and a willingness to raise substantive questions when circumstances warrant scrutiny. From a legal standpoint, the duty of care establishes a standard of accountability against which board conduct may be measured. Negligence or recklessness in fulfilling this duty can expose individual board members to personal liability, underscoring the necessity of diligence and engagement at every level of board service.

Duty of Loyalty

The duty of loyalty requires board members to subordinate personal and external interests to the interests of the nonprofit organization. This principle serves as the primary safeguard against conflicts of interest and ensures that organizational decisions are motivated by the mission and welfare of the institution rather than individual gain.

Board members are obligated to disclose potential conflicts of interest and to recuse themselves from deliberations and votes in which they hold a personal stake. Consider, for example, a board member whose private business enterprise is under consideration for a service contract with the organization — the duty of loyalty demands full disclosure and abstention from the relevant proceedings. This duty further encompasses the protection of confidential organizational information and the avoidance of conduct that could compromise the nonprofit’s reputation or financial integrity. Violations of this duty not only carry legal consequences but can fundamentally undermine the institutional trust upon which nonprofit organizations depend.

Duty of Obedience

The duty of obedience binds board members to faithful adherence to the organization’s stated mission and mandates compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and internal governance policies. Board members are expected to act within the scope of the organization’s governing documents and to resist any deviation from its chartered objectives and activities.

This duty encompasses oversight of tax compliance, regulatory reporting, employment law adherence, and the integrity of fundraising practices. A board that rigorously monitors whether its solicitation activities conform to both legal requirements and ethical standards is giving full expression to this obligation. The duty of obedience protects the organization’s legal standing and tax-exempt status while reinforcing the ethical foundation that distinguishes the nonprofit sector from other institutional forms.

The Interrelation and Balance of the Three Duties

The duties of care, loyalty, and obedience are not discrete obligations but interdependent principles that collectively constitute a comprehensive framework for ethical and effective governance. The duty of care ensures that decisions are well-informed and deliberate; the duty of loyalty ensures they are made for the right reasons; and the duty of obedience ensures they remain within appropriate legal and mission-driven boundaries.

Board members who internalize this framework are better equipped to navigate the complex challenges inherent in nonprofit governance — balancing competing stakeholder interests, managing institutional risk, and sustaining organizational effectiveness over time. As the nonprofit sector continues to evolve in response to shifting regulatory, financial, and social pressures, the unwavering commitment of board members to these foundational principles remains indispensable to institutional credibility and mission fulfillment.

Board Member CLO Checklist

Use this checklist as a practical self-assessment tool for evaluating your adherence to the CLO Doctrine.

Duty of Care

• Attend all board and committee meetings, or provide advance notice when unable to do so

• Review all meeting materials, financial reports, and operational updates prior to meetings

• Ask clarifying questions when information is incomplete or unclear

• Participate meaningfully in strategic planning and organizational assessment

• Stay informed about sector trends, legal developments, and best practices relevant to the organization

Duty of Loyalty

• Complete and update conflict-of-interest disclosures annually and as new conflicts arise

• Recuse yourself from discussions and votes involving personal or professional conflicts

• Maintain strict confidentiality regarding non-public organizational information

• Evaluate all decisions through the lens of organizational benefit, not personal interest

• Avoid actions — inside or outside the boardroom — that could harm the organization’s reputation

Duty of Obedience

• Familiarize yourself with the organization’s articles of incorporation, bylaws, and mission statement

• Ensure all board decisions align with the organization’s stated mission and governing documents

• Confirm that the organization is current on all regulatory filings and tax obligations

• Oversee fundraising and program activities for compliance with legal and ethical standards

• Openly bring up concerns about mission drift, policy violations, or legal noncompliance promptly

My wife recently bought a new spice rack for the kitchen. She doesn’t have an obscene number of spices — we counted 25 in total. When I finished counting, I said, “I bet you use 5 or 6 of these half the time and the rest the other half.” She gave me a puzzled look, then smiled and said, “You know what, you’re right.”

That’s Price’s Law in action.

An Interesting Discovery

Price’s Law was discovered by Derek J. de Solla Price, a British physicist, science historian, and information scientist. While reviewing scientific journals, Price made a striking observation: a small number of authors were responsible for a disproportionately large share of the papers. Specifically, he found that in any sample of 100 papers written by 25 authors, just 5 of those authors would have written 50 of them. In other words, half the output came from the square root of the contributors.

Once you see it, you’ll spot it everywhere.

Consider the 2025 Cincinnati Reds, the local baseball team. Last season, 25 players recorded at least one at-bat, and the team combined for 1,333 hits. The square root of 25 is 5 — and those top 5 hitters accounted for 670 hits, exactly 50.2% of all the hits for the entire team.

Or think about your monthly bills. If you pay nine bills regularly, odds are the top three — mortgage, car payment, utilities — account for more than half of what you spend.

Why This Matters

Price’s Law reveals how productivity naturally sorts itself out. No matter how much we want every team member firing on all cylinders, if you have nine people on your team, roughly three of them will produce half the output. That doesn’t mean the other six aren’t working — it just means this pattern is remarkably consistent across human endeavors.

Here’s where it gets interesting. As organizations grow, this dynamic can quietly erode performance. Imagine a 9-person team producing 10 widgets a day. Three people are generating 5 widgets; the other six are generating the remaining 5.

Now you scale up to 16 people, and output grows proportionally to 18 widgets a day. By Price’s Law, 4 people will produce 9 widgets while the other 12 produce the other 9. Your top performers are actually more productive than before (from 1.67 widgets each to 2.25), but your lower-tier performers have quietly gotten worse (from 0.83 to 0.75). For every high performer who raises the ceiling, you’ve added multiple people pulling down the floor.

The Flip Side

Here’s the encouraging part. Price’s Law also tells you how little it actually takes to stand out. If the square root of any group drives half the results, separating yourself from the pack doesn’t require heroic effort — it requires consistent, compounding improvement.

Commit to getting 1% better — every day, every week, or even every month — and that improvement compounds quickly. In the long run, you become a force your competitors simply can’t match. Whether you’re growing as a person, a professional, or an organization, the math is working in your favor the moment you decide to show up a little more consistently than everyone else.

Some times are worth celebrating for the simplest of reasons — not because they demand perfection, but because they simply invite presence.

I’ve always been drawn to those kinds of moments. No need to “do all the things.” Just show up, be glad, and enjoy the company of people worth being around. After all, good stories last longer than the best planned activities or meals ever provided.

It’s in that spirit of presence that I find myself thinking about the one tool I need as a leader that I simply cannot do my job without. That tool is generosity.

It’s a term we don’t talk about enough these days.

In a culture that has primed the pump on self-reliance and grit — both of which matter — generosity sometimes takes a back seat. Yet it’s generosity that keeps our organizations alive. And it’s generosity that remains one of the most tangible expressions of love in this world.

Love is a tricky word to define. Ask ten people and you’ll get eleven answers. It’s context-dependent — romantic devotion, generational family bonds, deep friendships. But if I had to put my finger on it, love is probably best defined as the best in me serving the best in you.

That’s exactly where we find ourselves in this work. No matter what role we play, we are always serving the best in others around us.

When neighbors come to our door, we open it — to listen, comfort, and stand with those worn down by life’s hardships.

When donors come, we share the powerful stories of how generosity changes lives and communities.

When we speak publicly, we remind people that the spirit driving our work helps make our corner of the world feel more like home than just another place on the map.

Generosity brings joy, love, and peace. It is the most important tool we carry.

Without the generosity of donors, volunteers, and communities, we simply could not do what we do. No amount of strategic planning, survey research, or financial stewardship can replace the warmth of the human spirit drawing out the best in others. There is no substitute for generosity. There is no substitute for love.

I am grateful for you — readers of this newsletter. I am grateful for the work you do every day to make communities better places to live. I am grateful for the people who see something broken in the world and take personal responsibility to fix it.

Friends, we are world changers, and that is a serious responsibility. In a world so defined by division, I hope we never lose our generous spirit — because generosity is what will restore it.

Generosity has fed the hungry child. Generosity has healed the sick. Generosity has lifted families out of poverty. Division and discord couldn’t dream of doing any of those things.

Stay generous.

We live in an era defined by relentless change and rising conflict. Information floods in from every direction, urgency is manufactured around the clock, and the emotional weight of leading an organization — with real people and real stakes — can pull even the most capable leader off-center. Groundedness is the antidote. It is the capacity to hold a clear, patient, and present mind even when everything outside of you is in motion.

At its core, being grounded is living within oneself. It means refusing to allow the timelines of others, the emotions of others, or the expectations of others to consume your agency so completely that your decisions no longer reflect your own judgment — only the pressure you absorbed. This isn’t indifference. It’s discernment. Grounded leaders are deeply engaged with the people they serve, but they are not governed by them.

Groundedness also requires an honest reckoning with the world as it is. We lead in a broken world. On any given day, a million things can go wrong — and some days, many of them do. Tragedies occur. Resources fall through. Good people will carry heavy losses.

The grounded leader doesn’t deny that weight, but neither do they collapse beneath it. They shift their attention from the wound to the response. They understand that our charge is not to fix everything, but to stabilize what we can — to repair someone’s world through a thoughtful gesture, a clear decision, or a steady presence that others can orient themselves by.

This is why grounded leaders become magnets. People are drawn not to those who have all the answers, but to those who remain anchored when answers are scarce. Groundedness radiates reliability, and reliability builds the kind of trust that sustains organizations through difficult seasons.

It’s important to name what agency actually is — because leaders often confuse it with control. Agency is not the ability to engineer outcomes. It is the quiet strength to choose your next step, even when the path ahead is uncertain. Leading through chaos with sovereignty doesn’t mean insulating yourself from discomfort. It means embracing patience, presence, and groundedness to transform panic into purpose.

You may not win against every force the world throws at you. But you push forward anyway — because the work is yours, the mission is yours, and the responsibility to show up fully is yours. That is what it means to be grounded.

Patience is best practiced in presence. Presence with ourselves, and presence with the people in front of us.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

In my work, I meet people on some of the hardest days of their lives. They come through the doors of our food pantry — sometimes for the first time, sometimes after losing a job, a marriage, a sense of direction. And what I’ve learned, slowly and sometimes reluctantly, is that a box of food is rarely the whole answer. What people often need first is someone willing to simply sit down next to them.

I used to ask everyone the same question when they walked in: “What do you need?”

And almost no one answered it directly. What I got instead were stories — how things unraveled, what the last few months looked like, the moment something finally broke. I won’t lie, early on that frustrated me. I had a job to do. There were other people waiting. I kept thinking, just answer the question.

But I eventually stopped thinking that. Because I started to understand that for a lot of people, speaking the story out loud is how they figure out the answer. Verbalizing the chaos is part of sorting through it. Once I accepted that, something in me settled. I stopped rushing. I stopped preparing my next sentence while someone was still talking. I just listened — without judgment, without advice they didn’t ask for, without signaling that I had somewhere else to be.

I was there. That’s it. Just there.

What surprised me is how rarely people experience that. Being truly heard — not evaluated, not redirected, not hurried — turns out to be its own kind of relief.

And here’s what I’ve come to believe: you can’t really offer that to someone else if you haven’t learned to offer it to yourself.

You are the only person who will be present for every single moment of your own life. Every quiet fear at 2 a.m., every private victory, every long stretch of uncertainty. Your people — your family, your friends, the ones who love you — they carry pieces of your story. But they don’t carry all of it. Only you do.

So the question I keep returning to is this: how well do I actually know myself?

We live in a culture that makes that question hard to sit with. There’s always something pulling at our attention — a notification, a feed, a podcast filling the silence in the car. And I get it. Silence can feel uncomfortable. Even a little threatening. We’ve been trained to treat every quiet moment as a gap to be filled.

But I think we’ve lost something in all that noise. There’s a kind of art in stillness that most of us have stopped practicing. A particular kind of knowing that only comes when you stop consuming long enough to just be.

For me, it’s a bike ride without headphones. A few minutes of journaling before the day starts. Sitting with a thought instead of immediately reaching for my phone. None of it is dramatic. But it adds up.

Presence — real presence — starts in solitude. And from there, it has a way of showing up everywhere else.

Patience doesn’t come naturally for many of us, especially in leadership. We tend to equate our worth with our ability to solve problems quickly. In both work and life, we often feel pressure to fix it now—as if decisiveness alone proves our value. It’s an admirable instinct, but one that can get us into trouble.

In reality, our greatest value as leaders isn’t in jumping to solutions. It’s in seeing the problem clearly and articulating how that problem is affecting our community. That’s the real leadership transition—from technician to teacher, from fixing to empowering. The technician rushes in, repairs the issue, and moves on. The leader steps back, guides others, and lets understanding emerge. Because when we force a diagnosis, we often end up projecting our own issues instead of seeing what’s truly there.

In a crisis, the pressure to act fast can be overwhelming. But action rooted in incomplete information usually creates new problems. Patience isn’t passivity—it’s strategic waiting. It’s choosing to slow down long enough to understand what’s really happening before deciding what to do.

Most of the time, our failures don’t come from misunderstanding the solution—they come from misunderstanding the problem. When we impose tidy answers on messy realities, we frustrate our teams and ourselves. The best course is often simple: take time to fully understand the nature of what you’re facing.

Problems aren’t discovered—they’re revealed. They surface gradually, as trust builds, as more voices are heard, as we let the full picture come into focus. Leaders who act before that revelation risk making noise instead of progress.

Patience, then, is wisdom in motion. It’s the discipline to observe and wait, even when others are pressing for quick decisions. A lack of immediate action isn’t necessarily laziness—it can be deliberation at work. The wise leader knows when to push, when to pull, and when to let the river take its own course.

Logic models are one of the most effective tools a nonprofit can use to connect day-to-day activities with long-term community change. They help organizations clarify not only what they do, but why it matters—linking resources, actions, and measurable results into one coherent framework.

A well-constructed logic model turns complex programs into a clear visual story of impact. For small and midsize nonprofits, it can serve as both a strategic planning tool and a communication asset for grants, partnerships, and performance evaluation.

Step 1: Define the Purpose

Begin by determining why you are developing the logic model and what decisions it will inform.

• Clarify your goals. Identify the specific changes your organization intends to achieve—short-term (immediate learning or awareness), medium-term (changes in behavior or practice), and long-term (sustained improvements in quality of life or community well-being).

• Engage your stakeholders. Involve staff, board members, volunteers, and even program participants. Their perspectives help ensure the model reflects your organization’s full value.

Step 2: Identify Inputs

List the resources required to achieve your goals: funding, staff, volunteers, facilities, data systems, community partnerships, or specialized expertise. Think broadly—inputs include both tangible assets and less visible strengths like community trust or local knowledge.

Step 3: Outline Core Activities

Specify the main actions your organization undertakes to deliver on its mission. Examples might include:

• Direct service programs such as training sessions or mentorship initiatives

• Community outreach or coalition-building

• Research, advocacy, or policy engagement

Your activities should clearly connect to your mission and use the inputs you’ve identified.

Step 4: Determine Outputs

Outputs are the direct, countable products of your activities. They are often expressed as numbers—workshops conducted, participants trained, meals served, or reports produced. Outputs track what you did, not yet what changed.

Step 5: Define Outcomes

Outcomes describe the changes that result from those outputs. It can help to think in a sequence:

• Short-term outcomes: Increased knowledge, awareness, or capacity among program participants.

• Medium-term outcomes: Behavioral or practice changes that occur as a result.

• Long-term outcomes: Significant shifts in conditions, such as improved employment, health, or civic engagement rates.

Strong outcomes are measurable, time-bound, and logically linked to previous steps.

Step 6: Identify the Impact

Impact represents the broader, sustainable change your organization contributes to—such as a more equitable community, a healthier local economy, or improved access to opportunity. While outcomes focus on program-level change, impact captures systemic or population-level transformation over time.

Step 7: Create the Logic Model Diagram

Transform your information into a visual layout showing how each component connects. Common columns include:

• Inputs: Resources and capacities invested

• Activities: Core actions and strategies

• Outputs: Immediate tangible results

• Outcomes: Progressive changes in knowledge, behavior, or conditions

• Impact: Ultimate, long-term effect

You can design your model using simple software like Canva, Lucidchart, or even Word/Excel. The goal is clarity, not artistic detail.

Step 8: Review and Refine

Share a draft of your logic model with staff, board members, and partners. Ask: Does this accurately reflect what we do and how we create change? Revise as needed, and revisit it periodically as your organization’s context or priorities evolve.

Step 9: Put the Model to Work

A logic model is valuable only if it is used. Incorporate it into:

• Strategic planning: Align budgets, staffing, and timelines with desired outcomes.

• Implementation: Ensure programs stay focused on intended goals.

• Evaluation and reporting: Demonstrate measurable impact to funders and the community.

Tips for Nonprofit Success

• Keep it simple. The best models fit on one page and communicate clearly to both experts and the public.

• Stay flexible. Modify the model as your organization grows or shifts focus.

• Integrate deeply. Treat your logic model not as a compliance document but as a living part of your organizational strategy.

A thoughtful logic model helps nonprofit leaders bridge the gap between mission and measurable impact—turning ideas into outcomes and outcomes into lasting change.

We’ve all been there.

I was having lunch with a friend recently, and he was talking about a nonprofit he’s involved with. Besides the executive director, the organization has three program coordinators.

At first glance, that might sound fine. But when I look closer, it reminds me of a car that looks like a Porsche but runs with the engine of a Pinto—it might look great, but it’s not built to last.

Many small or new nonprofits end up in this position. They invest nearly all their time, energy, and resources into delivering programs and proving their value to the community. That’s understandable—but also short-sighted.

What if I told you that program delivery is just one part of what makes a nonprofit healthy and sustainable? Because every nonprofit has several other critical roles that keep it running smoothly behind the scenes.

The Eight Critical Roles Every Nonprofit Needs

No matter the size, every nonprofit has eight key roles that must be filled to some degree. Smaller organizations often have one person wearing multiple hats, but as an organization grows, its board and leaders must decide when it’s time to bring in professionals for each role.

1. Chief Program Officer
This is often where nonprofits start. Someone needs to design programs, measure impact, and make a difference. Many founders begin here, focusing on mission delivery. The challenge is learning to grow beyond this role into a broader leadership perspective.

2. Chief Financial Officer
In small nonprofits, the board treasurer often fills this role. That can work when the finances are simple, but as the organization grows, professional accounting support can ensure compliance and demonstrate responsible use of funds.

3. Chief Marketing Officer
This person handles communications and branding. Your brand is what you say about yourself, while your reputation is what others say about you. Are they in sync? Having someone to manage messaging and maintain consistency across the team strengthens public trust.

4. Chief Development Officer
Raising money is never easy, but it’s essential. A Chief Development Officer leads fundraising, builds donor relationships, and helps the organization communicate its impact and stewardship clearly to supporters.

5. Chief Human Resources Officer
As staff grow, someone must manage hiring, retention, benefits, and workplace culture. In many small nonprofits, the executive director fills this role until the organization can add HR support.

6. Chief Technology Officer
Technology touches everything—security, communication, operations. A CTO makes sure systems are secure, up to date, and aligned with the organization’s needs.

7. Chief Facilities Officer
If your nonprofit owns buildings, vehicles, or equipment, you need someone responsible for maintenance, repairs, and compliance. Proper facility management prevents costly problems later.

8. Chief Volunteer Officer
For nonprofits that depend on volunteers, this role is crucial. It’s about more than recruiting—it’s about training, appreciation, and keeping volunteers connected and engaged.

Building a strong nonprofit takes more than great programs. It takes care, planning, and attention across these different areas. Not every organization needs a full-time person for each role, but every nonprofit should recognize that all eight functions matter. It’s rare to find one person who can handle them all effectively—so it’s worth planning for the right mix of people and expertise to build something that lasts.

The Conversation
The other day I was hanging out with a group of people who think a lot like I do. Some would call it a life group, others might say mastermind group—but whatever the name, I’ve been part of groups like this for years. A few have been online, but most of them happen in person, which I prefer. There’s something special about being in a circle of people who are all trying to learn, grow, and figure things out together.

What I’ve realized is this: in a group setting, you pick up so much wisdom just by listening. In one-on-one talks, there is the risk that one person usually ends up doing most of the talking—it’s just how conversations go. But when you’ve got a group, there’s a lot more give and take. People pause, reflect, and actually listen. That’s where the good stuff happens.

Last week, our group got into a deep talk about leadership. That’s always a tricky subject because it means different things to different people. But we all agreed on one thing: we’re surrounded by a lack of real leadership right now. There’s plenty of noise, plenty of people talking, but not a lot of calm, steady direction. Positive thinking helps, but it doesn’t fix what’s broken.

We’re the Hardest People to Lead
Somewhere in that conversation, someone asked the tough question: do we even want to be led? That one hit hard. Because we like the idea of leadership, but living it out—especially leading ourselves—is tough work.

I’ve learned this the hard way. It’s nearly impossible to lead others if you don’t have a grip on leading yourself. At the end of the day, we’re the only people we have to live with 24/7. We wake up with ourselves, we go to bed with ourselves, and we still manage to break promises we make to our own hearts. We let ourselves down in small ways all the time.

So it’s fair to ask—how can we lead anyone else if we’re not disciplined enough to manage our own mess first? And honestly, that’s what makes it so disappointing when we see leaders fail. Deep down, part of us recognizes that same struggle in ourselves.

The Road to Redemption
So what do we do, especially in a world that’s desperate for real leaders?

Here’s what I think. Leadership isn’t about being perfect—it’s about doing the work. Real leaders put things back in order, one piece at a time. There’s always something that needs fixing in our lives, our homes, our communities. Some of it’s big, some of it’s small, but it all matters.

Start with the small stuff. Clean up what’s right in front of you. Maybe it’s a habit that needs changing or a relationship that needs a little care. The point is to take the first step. People notice when you do that—they see that you’re paying attention, that you care, that you take responsibility.

After a while, something shifts. You start growing into a person others trust. You become someone they look to. Keep at it for a year or two, and suddenly you’re leading almost without trying.

Leadership doesn’t have to be complicated. It just takes consistency, humility, and a willingness to start right where you are.

Onward and upward,
Bill

During the long Thanksgiving holiday, I had some time to reflect on the holiday season. We were just days removed from Thanksgiving and heading strong into Christmas. Personally, while I like Thanksgiving, Christmas is not exactly my favorite holiday.

For purely selfish reasons, I love Thanksgiving because it’s a day of low expectations. I know a lot of people try to “do all the things” on a day like Thanksgiving and bust themselves to reach for unattainable levels of perfection, but it really isn’t necessary, at least for me. A warm meal and time with family is all that matters.

Christmas, on the other hand, it all about the expectations. I can’t count how many Hallmark Christmas movies I have had to see, where the cute young woman has to decorate all the cookies, buy all the presents, fall in love with the quiet, flannel shirt guy all while saving the whole town from some existential crisis. What a load of malarkey. Nine times out of last ten years, my wife and I are still wrapping presents watching the Pope deliver midnight mass on Christmas Eve.

If you know me, rushed and hurried is not my style. During Thanksgiving, I’ll gladly consume whatever is made and do it with a glad and cheerful heart and hopefully do it in the company of people that I enjoy being around. To me, the stories we tell around tables are much more valuable than anything under a tree. After all, good stories last longer than the best home cooked meals.

But as I think about the holiday season, I think about the one tool I need as a non-profit executive director. Without this one thing, I can’t do my job and in many ways, the holiday season is all about this one thing. That tool is generosity.

It’s a term we don’t talk about much these days.

In a culture that has primed the pump on self-reliance and grit (both of which are important), generosity sometimes takes a back seat. Yet, it’s generosity that keeps our nonprofit shops open. And yet, it’s that generosity that is one of the most tangible examples of love that abounds in this world.

Love is a tricky word to define. If you ask ten people what love is, you’ll probably get eleven different answers. And it’s one of those words that is highly context dependent. Romantic devotion, generational bonds between families, friendships all conjure up love in different ways depending on where we are in life. But, if I had to put my finger on it, Love is probably best defined as “The Best in Me Serving The Best In You.”

And that’s where we find ourselves in the nonprofit world. No matter what role we play in the nonprofit world, we are always serving the best in others around us.

When we have our neighbors come to our front door, we gladly open the doors of our shop to listen, comfort and console those that are beaten down by the tyrannies of life. When our donors come, we share with them the powerful stories of how generosity changes lives and changes communities. When we speak to our communities, we remind them that the spirit we see in our work helps make our little corner of the world more like a home than just another place on the map.

Generosity brings our world joy, love and peace. And it’s the most important tool we need to do our job.

If we didn’t have the generosity of our donors, our volunteers and our communities we could not do what we do. No amount of strategic planning, no amount of survey research, no amount of financial stewardship can take the place of the warmth of the human spirit to bring out the best in others. There is no replacement for generosity. There is no substitute for love.

I am grateful for all of you, readers of this newsletter. I am grateful for the work you are doing to help make our communities wonderful places to live. I am grateful for the people who everyday see something broken in the world and they take the responsibility to try to fix it.

Friends, we are world changers and that is a huge responsibility. In our world, that is so defined by division, I hope we never lose our generous spirit. Because, we know that generosity is what will restore our world.

Generosity has fed the hungry child. Generosity has healed the sick. Generosity has taken a family from poverty. Division and discord couldn’t dream of doing any of those things.

Happy Holidays friends and Stay Generous!

Running a nonprofit has always reminded me of managing a minor-league baseball team. Wins and losses matter, but not nearly as much as developing people. Our job is to grow talent—to give staff and volunteers the tools and confidence to move up or move on. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s vital.

I’ve always seen my own nonprofit as a launch pad, not a destination. Ideally, people leave better equipped than when they arrived. I used to think college athletics worked the same way. Then I saw something that made me question that.

Recently, a nationally ranked football team finished 10–2, but declined to play in a postseason bowl game. By the way, they aren’t the only ones, other teams have said they aren’t playing an end of season bowl game as well. This team narrowly missed the College Football Playoff, and their message was clear: If the ultimate prize isn’t on the table, we’re done.

From a leadership standpoint, that should make anyone running a team take notice.

What does that teach seniors who will never wear the uniform again?
What does it model for younger players still learning commitment and resilience?
And what does it tell their supporters about loyalty and pride?

That mindset doesn’t just show up in sports—it creeps into workplaces too.

Do we only show up when the grant gets approved?
Do we push hard only when a promotion or bonus is guaranteed?
Do we stay engaged when the goals aren’t perfect—when the budget is tight or the volunteer list is short?

If not, we’re not building resilient teams. We’re building conditional performers—people who give their best only when the reward is visible.

The seasons without trophies—the near-misses, the rebuild years—are where culture is built. Those are the moments when leaders earn trust and teams shape their identity.

In small nonprofits especially, what you normalize in the unglamorous stretches matters most. Do you still celebrate effort and progress when results fall short? Do you remind your team that finishing strong is just as important as winning?

Resilience works like a muscle: it’s trained in the quiet seasons, not the championship ones. If people learn that quitting is acceptable when the reward shrinks, they’ll struggle to rally when it really counts.

And the influence of that attitude is everywhere. Many workplaces today reflect a “what’s-in-it-for-me” culture. Leaders can counter it by re-centering the mission—by making sure everyone understands why the work matters, whether or not recognition follows.

There’s a quiet pride in showing up when no one’s watching, in closing out the fiscal year or campaign with diligence even when the big prize isn’t there. Those moments define your organization’s DNA.

Because in the end, when the spotlight fades, it’s not the trophies people remember—it’s the culture you built.

Recently, I was asked to talk about the idea of character to a small congregation. When it came to planning the discussion, I immediately thought of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man that in many ways exemplified character.

So, in a bit of a break from working on the tools of running a nonprofit, I thought it more appropriate to share these words with you. Please let me know what you think!

On August 28, 1963, nearly sixty years ago, Dr. King proclaimed that he had a dream, a grand vision for his country. His dream included that “his four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

As I reflect on where America has been in the nearly sixty years since that speech, where are we in terms of our judgement on color and character?

On the color front, progress has been made, but more progress is still needed. Our society has made strides to shed a past in which racism and bigotry was still hallmarks of polite society, but we still live in a live a country where individuals can still be shut out of opportunities not only by the color of their skin, but even things such as gender, religion and other factors that one can not change about themselves.

Winning the hearts and changing the mind of people on an individual basis can be a long and tiring task.

But when I think about Dr. King’s words, we often pay short shrift to the concept of character. What exactly is character? Where does character come from?

In my research, the dictionary had fifteen definitions for character, but the one that resonated the most was: “A person with a distinctive strength of mind and of resolution, marked with a sense of individuality and moral strength”.

The definition exudes a person with a sense of power and a sense of fortitude. An individual, regardless of race, gender or creed that acts in the benevolence of not themselves, but for the benefit of their family and their community.

And if we can agree upon that vision of human character, where does such a vision come from?

Such character can be firmly grown and molded through our spiritual development; here we are in one of the many houses of the Lord our community has. No doubt, many souls have been saved and lives changed thanks to the relationships that were built between an individual and their personal savior.

But even those relationships, if they are to take hold, needed something more than just divine intervention. Don’t get me wrong, the Lord can and has done miraculous and amazing things. But the miracles are only seen in the eyes that believe. How do we believe?

May I be so bold to propose that such a sense of belief, that such a desire to form character, that such a wish to create a better world can only be formed by the individual that begins to take responsibility for themselves, their families and their communities?

If we think that character is in short supply in our world, we could easily argue that responsibility is in even shorter supply.

And when I talk about responsibility, I am not merely talking about the misinformed use of the term “accountability”. Accountability, while important, has been transformed to mean to take the brunt of the blame for things that go wrong all the time. Don’t get me wrong, we need a world of accountability. We need to pay penance when our sins of commission or our perhaps, even more, detrimental, when our sins of omission, make our world a shakier place.

But, we need to welcome the concept of responsibility back to our world. We need each man and woman to wake up every morning and understand that we play a role for the world we live in. For every problem we see, we have created some of the conditions for that problem to exist. For every opportunity we see, our humble hearts should give gratitude to God and to others for what we can enjoy.

Responsibility used to be easier. The places and spaces where we used to learn responsibility used to be brimming with people. Churches, I am sure just like this one, used to bring in people of various backgrounds and socio-economic statuses to learn about God, loving your neighbors and applying responsibility to our daily lives.

But as time has marched on, our trust in our physical institutions have eroded. Churches that dot our landscapes, grow empty. Even social clubs, shrink as members get older and lose their emphasis on serving. Organized sports for our children have turned less into places where our kids learn about the fundamentals of teamwork and sportsmanship, into more hyper-competitve environments where families spend full weekends in their minivans going miles and miles for another athletic tournament.

And we have replaced those physical institutions for virtual groups. These groups where one click of a mouse gets us in and we can hide behind an avatar and a screen, shielding the world, and maybe even ourselves, from a real world that is out there.

And who hasn’t been caught up in the faux-community building of social media? I’ll admit, I know I have. I have set foot and yes, even participated in a virtual world that gives out dopamine hits for every comment made in anger, fear and frustration. I am not a better person for it and my world is not made better by what I have done. I have learned hard lessons that it is not responsible to use our words to cause anger in others and it is not responsible to use our actions to create division amongst ourselves.

I want a community where we can all happily take on the burden of responsibility. I want to live in a city where my neighbors are committed to making this a hometown for all people for generations to come. I want to live with people who are generous and willing to lend a hand to those that are working to live in dignity each and every day.

Friends, this can happen, but we have to take the responsibility of our lives and our communities deadly seriously. Because every time we fail to do the right thing, we send this world into more anxiety and nervousness.

It’s a huge undertaking, but it’s worth doing. And if you are serious in undertaking this challenge, I am here for you. I will work my hardest to encourage you, I will do my best to remind you not to compare yourself to who someone else is today, but to compare yourself to who you were yesterday. We will remind each other that there will be times that we will fall short, we all do. But, we will never tire in our task of looking at our lives and our community and doing the next right thing in front of us.

Whether that is picking up a piece of trash on the sidewalk, holding a door open for a stranger, offering a nice word of encouragement, we will pledge ourselves to make our lives, our community and our world one filled with character, regardless of the color of our skin.

I too have a dream like Dr. King. I have a dream where we can all live and thrive in a community where we are known by the strength of our character more than anything else.