Fractional COO for Nonprofit Founders
Started for the mission. Doing everything but. I navigate founders back.
Fractional COO partnership for nonprofit founders and executive directors. Start with a 60-second diagnostic.
The Problem
The Founder Drift
Most nonprofit founders I meet are drifting through one of five named stages. You will recognize yours in about ten seconds.
- 01
The Calling
You started this because something needed to exist and you were the one to make it.
- 02
The Stretch
The work grew. You stretched. You became the person who handles everything.
- 03
The Masking
You started hiding how much you were carrying. Performance became part of the job.
- 04
Bottleneck
Decisions, knowledge, and relationships all live with you. The org cannot move without you.
- 05
The Break
Burnout, health, marriage, or the mission itself starts taking the hit. Something has to give.
Naming the stage is the first step back to why they felt called to the work in the first place.
What I Do
The work, in plain language.
Strategic Planning
A working plan the team can actually use, with quarterly review and a way to say no to off-plan work.
Logic Model & Theory of Change
A clear map from your activities to the outcomes you promise funders, written so the team uses it.
Grant Research & Writing
Qualified funder shortlists and grant writing tied to a real cultivation pipeline, not a wish list.
Case Statement Development
A single case for support you can hand to any funder, board prospect, or partner without rewriting it.
Job Descriptions & KPI Systems
Every role with a written description and three to five KPIs the person knows and is measured on.
Thought Partnership & Executive Coaching
Executive-to-executive thinking time for founders making the calls no one else on the org chart can make.
Board Governance
A board that makes hard decisions independent of you, with role expectations and a recruitment pipeline.
Nonprofit Executive Coaching
Standing one-to-one coaching for founders and executive directors carrying the weight of the seat.
Who This Is For
Founder-led nonprofits between $500K and $5M.
Staff size as small as 3 and upwards of 15 team members. A founder or long-tenured executive director still holding most of the operation in their head. A real mission with growing impact. And an operating model that has outgrown the founder.
If you are carrying more than one person should carry, this is my work.
In Practice
What a focused engagement looks like.
A five-year-old youth-serving nonprofit in California's Central Valley had hit a half-million-dollar revenue ceiling. Funding sat with two or three concentrated donors. More than a dozen local school districts were closed to her as a partner. She had built something real and was carrying all of it alone, with no infrastructure to match the weight.
In a focused engagement, we built four things: a case statement she could hand to any funder without rewriting it, the cost-of-suspensions ROI math for her region so she could walk into any district meeting with the numbers ready, a qualified funder shortlist she could actually work, and a school partnership outline framed in the district's own funding language.
She walked into her next board meeting with infrastructure she did not have a month earlier.
Specific deliverables, in sequence, that a founder could take to her board the next week.
The Method
Five phases. In order.
- PHASE 1
Locate
We find exactly where you are on The Founder Drift. The free 60-second diagnostic completes this step at no cost.
- PHASE 2
Destination
We name where the organization needs to be in 12 to 18 months, and what 'good' looks like when we get there.
- PHASE 3
Map
We build the actual route: the systems, the hires, the funder strategy, the board moves, in sequence.
- PHASE 4
Hand Off
We transfer the work to the team, with documentation, KPIs, and accountability that does not depend on me.
- PHASE 5
Arrival
The organization runs as a real nonprofit, with the founder back in the work that called them to begin with.
The free 60-second diagnostic completes Locate at no cost.
Start with a sixty-second look in the mirror.
Five honest questions. A real score. A clear next step. No pitch.