Your operations are broken. Your ED is drowning. Your board is asking questions you can't answer. You need COO-level leadership, but you can't afford full-time right now.
We embed operational leadership 10-20 hours per week. No consultants. No recommendations that sit on a shelf. Just hands-on execution: alignment, budgets, systems, team coaching, and strategic clarity.
Your nonprofit is stuck between two worlds. You're too large to operate without real operational leadership. But you're not large enough to justify a full-time $150K salary.
So your ED becomes a part-time COO. Your finance director is managing HR. Your development director is fixing broken processes instead of building donor relationships. Things that should take a day take three weeks. Good people leave because systems don't exist. Money is left on the table.
Meanwhile, 75% of nonprofits have job vacancies, and 50% of development directors expect to leave their role within two years. Your team is burning out. Your board is getting restless. The fractional executive market is growing to meet this gap: over 120,000 fractional executives operate globally (Frak Conference 2024), with approximately 80,000 in North America (Vendux), and 72% of CEOs plan to increase use of fractional executives (Forbes).
This is where fractional executive leadership works. It's a fundamentally different model from interim executive leadership or consulting. And it's often the bridge organizations need during a leadership transition or turnaround.
We don't send you a deck and disappear. We show up 10-20 hours per week and do the work.
Development, programs, finance, and operations don't talk to each other. Your ED is the only translator. We fix that by building communication channels, running regular operations huddles, and creating decision frameworks so teams can move without waiting.
You're probably using last year's budget as your foundation. We rebuild your budget from zero, allocate resources to strategic priorities, and implement quarterly reforecasting so you're always accurate. This ties directly to our revenue operations framework that makes forecasting reliable and zero-based budgeting repeatable. (At Greenpeace USA, we achieved 1% forecasting accuracy across a $23M annual program.)
You have spreadsheets. You need systems. We document your core operational processes—hiring, onboarding, financial controls, reporting—and build infrastructure that scales. This work sits alongside tactical tools like our fundraising scorecard, which helps you measure what matters.
Your staff are capable, but they're trained in the chaos they inherited. We coach managers, hold performance conversations, onboard new team members, and build leadership capacity so your organization doesn't depend entirely on you. This matters especially in restructuring moments when roles and expectations are being redefined.
Your board approved a three-year plan. You're two months in and it's already slipping. We translate strategy into quarterly milestones, assign accountability, track progress, and solve the obstacles that come up in real time. It's the difference between having strategy and actually executing it—and it's proven valuable at organizations like Greenpeace during strategic transformation.
An operations consultant audits your organization, interviews stakeholders, analyzes data, and delivers a 40-page report with recommendations. Then they leave, and you're responsible for implementing everything.
A fractional COO does all of that, but then stays embedded to execute it. You're not hiring external expertise. You're extending your leadership team. You get the strategic thinking AND the operational output.
Consultants diagnose. Fractional COOs diagnose and fix.
This matters because execution is where nonprofits fail. The market has caught on: by 2027, nearly one-third of midsize companies will employ fractional executives (Gartner), and 96% of early-adopter CEOs said fractional leaders met or exceeded ROI expectations (PwC).
You have a fractional COO problem if:
You DON'T need fractional COO if your operations are solid and your team is stable. But if operations are breaking, fractional COO often delivers faster ROI than full-time executive hiring.
Fractional COO: $5,000–$15,000 per month
Pricing depends on:
For context: A full-time nonprofit COO salary is $120,000–$200,000 annually, plus benefits, plus hiring time. Fractional COO at $5K-$15K per month gives you experienced leadership, flexibility, and proven execution without the permanent cost structure.
Typical engagement timeline:
We're flexible on scope and pricing. If you have a specific project—quarterly reforecasting, team restructure, board-driven operational audit—we can scope it tighter.
I've been where you are. For nearly a decade, I was second-in-command of operations at Greenpeace USA, managing $50M+ development budgets across 400+ staff in 17 field locations nationally.
I didn't just run operations. I rebuilt them:
I'm not a consultant who left operations in 2010. I've been in the trenches for 20 years. I know what works and what doesn't because I've had to live with the consequences.
Fractional COO is one lever. LFG Group offers other ways to close operational gaps:
Or explore GTG Collective, where we connect you with specialist practitioners in major gifts, finance, digital, executive coaching, and strategic planning.
A fractional COO provides hands-on operational leadership: aligning teams across silos, redesigning processes, managing budgets and forecasts, onboarding and coaching staff, implementing systems, and ensuring execution against strategic goals. You're not hiring a consultant who advises from the outside. You're hiring an operator who does the work.
A consultant diagnoses problems and gives recommendations. A fractional COO diagnoses problems, gives recommendations, and then executes the solution. You get strategic thinking AND operational output. You're trading 10-20 hours per week of embedded leadership for full-time cost.
Fractional COO engagements at LFG Group range from $5,000 to $15,000 per month depending on scope, organization size, and complexity. A typical engagement is 6-12 months. Compare that to a full-time nonprofit COO salary of $120,000–$200,000 annually plus benefits.
Most fractional COO engagements are 10-20 hours per week, though this varies based on organizational need and engagement phase. Onboarding and crisis stabilization require more hours upfront. Steady-state operations may require fewer. Hours are tailored to what your organization actually needs.
Hire fractional when: you need immediate operational leadership, your operations are in transition, you want to test a new structure before hiring full-time, you can't afford full-time right now but operations are breaking, or you need specialized expertise for a defined project. Fractional COOs are perfect for nonprofits with $5M–$50M revenue and operational gaps.
Yes. A fractional COO typically manages or supervises existing staff, aligns teams, handles performance issues, and coaches managers. You're not hiring a solo operator. You're bringing in someone who leads and develops your people.
Most of the nonprofits we work with waited too long. They tried to hire full-time. They tried to fix things with spreadsheets and team willpower. By the time they called, people were burned out and money was gone.
If your operations are your bottleneck right now, let's talk. We'll do a diagnostic call, assess where you actually are, and tell you what's possible in 6 months.
No pitch. No deck. Just operator to operator.
LFG 🚀