Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast

A gear shift moment is what I call that phase of your org when you’re between where you were and that next impact horizon for your organization. You’ve reached the end of one growth stage but you haven’t settled into another one.  

It’s like when you’re riding a bike and you shift gears -- everything feels just a little chaotic for a few moments before the new gear catches. 

Nonprofit growth is just like that.  

In each stage of growth, organizations hit a point where they can’t grow any further using their existing set of skills and knowledge, and systems. They have to shift gears if they want to keep growing. 

It happens time and time again, in every stage of growth. 

I walk through thin more depth in my training series: Focus on Growth: https://richiebabbage.com/focusongrowthbundle 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

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Today I talk about a fun cultivation activity that’s easy to pull together and can be done in the waning days of summer to set the stage for deeper engagement and activation this fall. 

What is this magical activity? It's called a Brain Trust.

It’s a stylized and facilitated gathering of experts and advisors that’s brought together to offer strategic guidance and advice in response to a specific organizational challenge or question.

They’re a low-hanging fruit chance to bring together people who are either experts in their field, people who have a unique perspective on a topic,  or just great and creative problem-solvers and strategic thinkers

You get to bring these people into your organization’s eco-system in a structured way, and provide a starting-point for deeper connection and engagement in the future.

I have loved these since I first learned about them 15 years ago! Throughout my leadership - and even as a board member - they have proven to be an exciting and powerful strategic tool -  network building, cultivation, and deepening engagement among existing stakeholders (esp. board members, advisors, and major donors). 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

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Untapped capacity can hide in plain sight. In this case, it’s in the form of our informal networks. The dozens - sometimes hundreds - of people that are floating around in your world that you know but aren’t connected to the organization in any structured or concrete way. 

These are people you’ve met at conferences, friends of board members with whom you’re loosely acquainted, people you sit on working groups with… 

This loose network is brimming with untapped capacity. The key is the concept of a leveraged network. A leveraged network is a constellation of structured relationships with micro-groups of people within your broader network that can be leveraged to expand organizational capacity, influence, and impact. 

When we think about our organizational capacity and the people in our networks that fuel our work, we tend to think about our staff and our board. These are the people “under the tent” so to speak. 

The concept of leveraged networks invites us to go to the next level, to look at everyone in our ecosystem and ask: is there a way to bring this person under the tent? Do structure their relationship in a way that deepens their connection to our work, and increases our ability to ask them for help? 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

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The Architecture of Impact is the framework around which my teaching is organized. 

The basic idea is this:  We talk about impact in so many ways, and ultimately,  this impact is our organization's north star.  It is what guides us programmatically and organizationally. If we’re doing it right, it serves as a foundation for our strategic vision, our fundraising, our hiring, who we partner with… 

There is a method to achieving that impact. There is an architecture behind the achievement of this impact: Specific,  concrete structures, systems, and processes that all healthy, high-impact organizations set up to enable them to achieve their impact. 

My Architecture of Impact framework offers the broad strokes of how to think about, define, and set up whatever that architecture is for your organization. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

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Today I'm spotlighting an incredible, high-impact organization -- Global Health Council, a national organization that sits in a really unique intersection within the global health world. They don't just bring together stakeholders around and across specific health issues -- they address cross-cutting issues that really go to the core of strengthening and supporting all of the many individual issues in the space. They make sure the infrastructure, supportive policy, and resources are there to drive consensus, build inquiry and ensure security across the entire global health space - as a whole.

Elisha and I talk about the intricacies of operationalizing a complex theory of change, the importance of engaging in system-level work, and how to think about and define meaningful impact in the advocacy space.  And we talk about the true meaning of health equity, and where GHC is going in the coming years -- how absolutely critical Elisha and the GHC members recognize it is for people from every part of the globe being at the same decision-making table and shaping policy together. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

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In today’s episode, I’m getting laser-focused on how to create the kind of systems that help you claw back your time. 

One of my secret obsessions has always been about how to best leverage systems to make work more efficient - what systems and tools can simplify my work, how I can move things off my plate to free up my time for bigger-picture thinking and planning…

I know so many of you want the same thing - I know because it’s one of the most frequently addressed topics in my Accelerator program! 

So in this episode, I want to talk about one of the most powerful systems I use to free up time in my own work, and what I recommend to my clients and students to make their workflows smoother, less filled with friction, and less cumbersome. 

Automation. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

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This week, I’m talking with Jaana Rehnström, founder and leader of The Kota Alliance.

At its core, Kota is about gender equity and women’s empowerment. They work both locally and globally to create synergies between organizations that serve and support women and girls. 

Jaana and I talk about how Kota was founded to elevate and expand capacity and impact --  there are so many organizations doing incredible work, and too often they simply don’t know about one another and don’t have the capacity to figure out how to work together in service of the women and girls in their communities. That’s where Kota comes in - they aim to serve as the interstitial tissue between these organizations - creating communities and efficiencies that build capacity and expand impact. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
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Today I'm talking with Nita Baum, leadership coach, teacher, and founder of b-free, a collective of freelancers and consultants that work together to re-envision and re-create the Workplace as HealingSpace,  where freedom, sustainability, and wellbeing happen for ALL people at and through work, not in spite of it.  

Nita has spent the past 20+ years stewarding complex organizations and teams through change and growth. Her first business was a strategy and organizational change consultancy to C-level executive leaders in K-16 education across the US and globe.  

What I find fascinating and compelling about what she does now, is that she takes the ideas of organizational design, team building, and culture change - all of the things that make up the interstitial tissue of a well-functioning organization - to the next level. 

She is a practitioner of holistic health coaching, yoga as psychosomatic therapy, conflict resolution and mediation, restorative justice facilitation, and psycho-somatic healing + embodied facilitation.   

In our conversation, she talks about how she draws on these skills and practices to help organizations and teams deepen their ability to work together and to find joy in their work. 

We talk about what she sees as the deep relationship between well-being and human potential, the strategies she draws on to help people and teams navigate conflict, and how organizations can bake healing leadership into the fabric of their work internally and in the world. 

Nita is a exciting thinker and creator, and a beautiful person to talk to. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
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I’m talking with Micaela, the founder, and ED of Moreart. Moreart exists to leverage community and harness the power of art to really address social issues. They bring artists into partnership with community members, organizations, and institutions - like courts and nonprofits, and community leaders - to create space for dialog. 

Micaela and I talk about the urgency of finding ways for people to work together across difference, about the power of a shared experience of artistic work to bring us together in new ways, and about how ultimately those new ways can open the door for deepened relationships and a chance for meaningful social change. 

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
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• YouTube

This is part two of my two-part mini-training series about thought leadership.  

Last week, I talked about the “why”  --  Why it’s important to have a thought leadership plan, and how precisely thought leadership can move your organization's work forward. 

Today I’m going to lay out my framework for thought leadership planning. Specifically, the elements of a strong plan.   I teach what I call the OATS framework:  Objectives, Audiences, Topics, and Strategies.  It's a simple yet effective framework for guiding and organizing your thinking about thought leadership.

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a high-touch coaching and training accelerator for established organizations with $1M+ budgets that are ready to design for impact sustained at scale.  

Budget under $1M? Join Elevate and get proven step-by-step playbooks + coaching support to build each of the core elements of your nonprofit's operating system - strategic clarity, a fundraising engine, a high-performance team, and an active and engaged board!   

Connect with me!

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• YouTube