As a procurement consultant and business coach, I coach and support startup nonprofits. I have a 4 step intervention method that can help organizations see results in 3-4 months.
Key interventions
1. Leadership Coaching.
I’ve been in your shoes and know your pain points so I offer that thought partnership. Here is a quote from a recent client:
“I struggle a lot with getting from point A to point B and getting to action. She has a way with being able to see your vision, listening to you, and come up with a game plan to bring dreams into reality!“
2. Sourcing Strategic Software for Nonprofits
Nonprofits get free access to Canva, Slack, and Google Workspace, and Monday through nonprofit tech validation companies like Percent and Tech Soup. These tools are the starter pack for small team collaboration.
Central Communications - Slack
Most work places have centralized workspace thanks to platforms like Microsoft Teams permeating corporate culture. A well designed communication platform can help manage inputs because leaders have a lot of inputs and by breaking out different channels it can free the ED from the management of all of the information while also staying in close communication with the team.
My approach is to leverage slack as a market leading platform which also means we can always get good customer support and test new features like Slack connect which allows teams to communicate externally with consultants and contractors for shorter term projects.
By leveraging these tools, I can help your organization work more efficiently even after we are done working together to keep staffing and tool costs down.
3. Volunteer Procurement
Volunteers can be valuable to a nonprofit’s growth. I prep them to get ready to receive the help people are ready to offer.
Common Issues with Skilled Volunteers
Part of the issue with working with skilled volunteers is they need a baseline onboarding and information to be very helpful. For example, marketing volunteers that means brand guidelines and a copy style guide. In my experience running 2 startups and acting as director in many others, that was an immediate hurdle to get through. My team offers design support to help you get to that point of being finding consistent marketing volunteer support.
4. Project Management
I have used Notion, Airtable, Asana, Monday, Google Sheets, ClickUp and quite a few others to manage teams in the past years. My friends know that I am always trying to push the next tool I think is the future. Thanks friends for your patience with me!
I've worked with many teams without experience in enterprise software and I noticed that some of these project management tools and their features might be more distracting than the work itself that needs to get done.
Google Sheets can typically do the job for a team because most of the other tools require a learning curve that isn't already there depending on another person's experience. When a team is small they need to focus on their goals and what they are trying to accomplish. Start with Google Sheets for tracking the important things and then explore a new software when a group is profitable and/or operations are at steady state. I start with Google sheets and determine how the next level of tracking based on team and project complexity.
With these approaches, you will flourish after our contract is done which is my number 1 goal for all of my previous clients. Get in touch if you’re interested in how I can help your organization.
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