Your nonprofit is facing revenue decline, leadership gaps, or operational chaos. You need someone who has actually run a $50M+ development operation through crisis and come out stronger. Not a cheerleader. An operator.
You expect transformation to mean inspirational meetings and cultural shifts. What actually fixes a nonprofit in crisis is different.
A real turnaround means:
What we don't do: Cost-cutting theater. Layoffs as first move. Aspirational 5-year plans. This is triage, then rebuild.
Every engagement follows the same structure because it works.
We interview staff, board, major donors. We audit revenue operations, budget process, team structure, and board function. We pull 12 months of giving data and forecast the next 3 years. By day 30, you have a written diagnostic showing exactly what's causing the decline and in what order to fix it.
Output: Diagnostic report + 90-day action plan with revenue targets.
We implement the changes that move revenue. That might be: realigning the development team, fixing board accountability, building a budget process from scratch, or clearing donor communication bottlenecks. We handle the hard conversations. Staff knows what's expected. Board is aligned.
Output: New organizational structure, budget, donor strategy, and communication plan in place.
We hand off a working operation. Documentation. KPIs. Accountability cycles. Regular board reporting. Donor lifecycle. The things that don't make headlines but keep nonprofits from circling back into crisis.
Output: Documented processes, 12-month revenue forecast, board reporting templates, staff onboarding complete.
We audit major gifts, monthly giving, foundation grants, and annual appeal. We find the bottlenecks. Donor communication gaps. Stewardship failures. Reporting blackholes. We clear them fast. Revenue typically stabilizes within 30 days because the problem isn't always low-income capacity—it's lost pipeline, poor retention, or communication breakdowns.
We assess staff against actual workload and skills. Some people are drowning. Some are misaligned. Some need training. We restructure around what actually needs to happen, not politics. The result: team retention, clear roles, realistic expectations.
Most nonprofits in crisis lack a single source of truth. Processes live in people's heads. Budgets don't match reality. Board reporting is reactive. We build: documentation, budget discipline, donor tracking, KPI reporting, communication cadence. Systems don't inspire. They prevent crisis.
A fractured board or board that doesn't understand its role keeps nonprofits stuck. We realign governance. Clear accountability. Real metrics. Transparent reporting. Boards that understand their job become partners in the fix, not obstacles.
You're an ED or Board Chair facing real revenue decline. You have 3-6 months to stabilize before the board forces a move. You want someone who has actually run a development operation at scale, not a consultant who has read about it. You're willing to make hard decisions and move fast.
You're between $3M-$30M in annual revenue. You have a team that can be structured. Your board can align around metrics. You need someone to take the pressure off for 90 days so you can fix the operation.
You want a cheerleader or someone to validate bad decisions. Your board is structurally hostile. You can't make staffing decisions. You expect a turnaround without changing anything. You have unlimited runway and can afford to move slowly.
This isn't theoretical. During a leadership transition in late 2024, we were brought in to stabilize operations across a complex multi-entity nonprofit:
This wasn't a six-month project. We started as a strategic consultant in April 2023 for an enterprise-level gap analysis. The organization was bleeding institutional knowledge. By the time we finished the transformation, every major process had documentation, accountability was clear, and the team knew what success looked like.
We've managed $50M+ development budgets across 17 locations with 400+ staff. We know what breaks at scale and how to fix it fast.
Context matters. You're not alone in this.
Your revenue isn't declining because you're not trying hard enough. It's declining because the system is broken: poor donor retention, understaffed operations, no budget discipline, no strategy. Fix the system. Revenue follows.
$75,000 - $150,000 for 3-6 months intensive work including fractional COO/CDO leadership, diagnostic, restructuring, and systems implementation.
If your crisis is specific—board governance, revenue operations, budget process only—we can scope smaller engagements. Minimum engagement typically starts at $25,000.
We structure payment to match delivery milestones: 30% at start, 40% at 60 days, 30% at final delivery. We also work with organizations that want to build into a larger consulting relationship.
A complete diagnostic of revenue operations, team structure, budget discipline, and board function. We deliver a 30/60/90 action plan with specific revenue targets, restructuring recommendations, systems implementation, and governance fixes. You get fractional COO/CDO leadership during execution.
Intensive engagements run 3-6 months. Revenue stabilization typically happens in 90 days. Full restructuring and systems overhaul takes the full window. Speed depends on board alignment and team buy-in.
Turnaround is diagnostic + strategic fix for specific problems (revenue decline, team dysfunction, budget chaos). Interim executive is full-time replacement leadership during transition. Different scope, different price.
Turnaround + Restructure engagements range $75,000-$150,000 for 3-6 months intensive work. Smaller scope interventions start lower. We structure payment to match delivery milestones.
Yes. Board dysfunction is often part of the problem. We diagnose governance gaps, realign incentives, and rebuild trust through transparent measurement and clear accountability. It's slower with a fractured board, but it works.
We assess skills, gaps, and fit. Some staff need restructuring, some need training, some need to move. We don't make assumptions. We measure performance against clear metrics and make recommendations based on data, not politics.
Turnaround work often connects to other engagements depending on what the diagnostic reveals:
You have a 90-day window to stabilize before the board forces a move. We know how to use it.