How Can I Help You?

Change happens, and it brings opportunity. But it also brings risk. Sometimes, you need help adapting to change or aligning strategy with your new environment. Sometimes, you aren’t sure about the best path forward, and you need an experienced, objective party to help you clearly assess the challenges and opportunities your organization faces. Often, you’ll have some promising ideas but would like a trusted advisor to help you confirm and tweak strategies for best results — I would be excited to help!

Maybe you’re facing one of the situations below, and you’re looking for some guidance. This list is by no means exhaustive, and I’d love to talk about your specific situation to see how I can help:

• You’re a new board chair (congratulations!), and you’d like to reassess strategy and resources to ensure the organization is well-positioned to fulfill its mission.
• You’re a new executive director or other staff leader (congrats to you, too!) and want to fully engage the board and/or staff with new energy and direction. Maybe you need help with a 100-day plan that introduces you to the right stakeholders and sets meaningful goals that show your passion and sense of direction.
• A new mandate from political leaders, voters, stakeholders, an important agency, or your own board requires you to adapt to a new policy environment and determine how to meet your mission while taking on new challenges.
• Social, economic, or political changes are affecting your operating environment, and you know you need to adapt to maintain funding, influence, and impact on the communities you serve.
• Your organization is merging or considering merging with another group, and you need to unify the staff and boards, determine your joint mission and goals, and learn how to have even more impact in your community.

Services I Provide

• Facilitation of board and/or staff brainstorming, deliberations, and consensus development on strategy.
• Working with your board to develop meaningful expectations and standards of board involvement, then working to ensure their engagement and enthusiasm.
• Help formulating a new or revised mission.
• Brainstorming about new markets you can serve or services you can provide; strategic thinking can be much different than strategic planning, and both are important!
• Community assessments, analysis of needs, focus groups and interviews with stakeholders, funders, community members, and target populations.
• Analysis of promising practices and benchmarks from peer organizations, competitors, standard-setting organizations, and expert literature.
• Crafting custom recommendations based on our collaboration, and continuing to work with you on implementation over time.
• A strategic planning process tailored to your needs — full, in-depth, or a quicker update and tune-up. I can facilitate and guide as you develop your mission, goals, objectives, strategies, processes, and timelines.
• Confidential advice and mentoring for new leaders.
  • As a new executive, leadership can be lonely. Are you swimming in a sea of new responsibilities? An experienced mentor and confidante can help you focus on the right strategies and stay accountable to your mission — I can help!
• Interim leadership — I may be able to lead your organization while you search for the next executive, making sure no balls get dropped and the organization continues to progress on its goals. I can also help evaluate candidates to ensure you recruit the right type of leader for your unique organization.

I would be excited to offer help with my 30 years of mission-driven work in nonprofit leadership and public-sector management consulting. I’d love to chat about your needs — no pressure, just an honest consideration about whether I’m a good fit to help. We can talk frankly about costs, too. I know how important that is to you. Call me at 916.633.4835. Or email me. I’m always happy to talk and meet new people who are working to make a difference in our world.

By the way, I recognize these processes need to be efficient! You want to get this done and get to work. I work hard to quickly and effectively help you find your path forward.

Policymakers, the news media, voters, constituents, donors, members… they all need useful information about the issues you’re working on. How do you effectively communicate the reasons why you do what you do? How do you present compelling information to help others catch the urgency of a situation you’re working to resolve? How do you make that information and data accessible enough to get the attention it deserves?

Experience is crucial. I’ve been producing quality, accessible policy analysis for 30 years — reports that generate front-page news, broadcast news specials, podcast and talk-show appearances, compelling legislative testimony, and powerful messages for discussions with policymakers, donors, and other stakeholders.

Services I Provide

• Policy briefs and memos for quick messaging on an issue.
• Longer research reports and white papers to more fully explore and explain problems and potential solutions.
• A rigorous research process that includes:
  • Collaborating with organization leaders and outside experts to clearly define research questions, report audiences, and goals for the projects.
  • Synthesis of existing research to understand your desired message and add weight to the evidence presented.
  • Identifying, gathering, and analyzing relevant data to present a strong case for policy action.
  • Presenting data with compelling charts and other visuals to emphasize the most important findings.
  • Brainstorming policy solution ideas with organization stakeholders and outside experts.
  • Finding best practices (or promising practices, if you will) from organizations doing similar work well.
  • Comparison of alternative policy solutions to help decision makers assess the path forward.
  • Accessible writing that speaks to busy policymakers, reporters, executives, and the public.
  • Decades of experience working with print and broadcast news media, understanding what gets their attention and how to distill complicated topics into newsworthy messages
• Guidance on communicating messages from the research through social media, informative emails, podcasts, public speaking opportunities, and other outlets.
• Follow-up presentations to your board or other venues where an expert witness is useful.

I would be excited to offer help with my 30 years of mission-driven work in nonprofit leadership and public-sector management consulting. I’d love to chat about your needs — no pressure, just an honest consideration about whether I’m a good fit to help. We can talk frankly about costs, too. I know how important that is to you. Call me at 916.633.4835. Or email me. I’m always happy to talk and meet new people who are working to make a difference in our world.

Maybe you’re managing a public agency facing demands from constituents or oversight bodies for performance improvement. Or leading a nonprofit that would like to modernize its technology or business processes. Could you use some guidance on using your skills to “move the needle” on your objectives? I can help, and I have some great partners to draw on for more intensive projects.

Services I Provide

• Program assessments — documenting challenges, performance issues, and opportunities for improvement.
• Gathering “best practices” (I prefer to call them promising practices) from exemplary organizations that could be implemented in your environment.
• Confidential interviews and focus groups with employees, clients, stakeholders, board members, and others to ferret out details about problems and strategic issues that need resolving.
• Reports to inform executive management, oversight agencies, constituents, elected officials, or others about issues and potential solutions.
• Community assessments to help organizations understand changes in their economic and social environments and learn how to adapt. These can also be required efforts to satisfy grant donors or other stakeholders.
• Pretty much anything else you can throw at me. 🙂 Let’s talk and see what your needs are!

If a project is more intensive, I may work with a partner to add capacity. Much of my Sacramento-based state agency work is through The Highlands Consulting Group, a fantastic, small, local firm with decades of experience and all of the contracting certifications needed for projects with state, federal, or local agencies.

I am also affiliated with CGR in Rochester, New York, a nonprofit consultancy with over 100 years of experience providing management and policy solutions for local, regional, state, and nonprofit agencies.

I would be excited to offer help with my 30 years of mission-driven work in nonprofit leadership and public-sector management consulting. I’d love to chat about your needs — no pressure, just an honest consideration about whether I’m a good fit to help. We can talk frankly about costs, too. I know how important that is to you. Call me at 916.633.4835. Or email me. I’m always happy to talk and meet new people who are working to make a difference in our world.