Greenpeace USA: Strategic Transformation

The Situation

Greenpeace USA's development department was facing structural challenges across reporting, documentation, communication, project management, and strategic clarity. Leadership recognized the need for comprehensive organizational assessment and invited Paul to return as a strategic consultant in April 2023.

The department was fractured. Data and development teams were actively adversarial. Nothing was prioritized—everything was urgent, which meant nothing got done. Documentation was nonexistent. Processes lived in people's heads, not in systems. There was no shared understanding of what the department was trying to accomplish or how to measure whether it was working.

Paul had previously led Greenpeace's development operations for 11 years (2006–2017) and built the organization's in-house canvass program. He knew the revenue drivers, the institutional history, and exactly where the risks were.

The Constraints

• Engagement started as a consulting contract—no formal authority over staff or decisions.
• The organization had 9 functional development programs, each with its own reporting needs and team dynamics.
• The grants management project had been stuck for over a year before Paul joined it.
• Everything in Phase 2 happened during November–December—the most critical fundraising period of the year, with no CDO in the seat.

What changed

• Enterprise gap analysis: Led process to gather, collate, and analyze 10 years of development data. Produced executive brief (October 2023) identifying 6 major organizational issues with actionable recommendations. All were implemented or entered active progress.
• Agile reporting transformation: Collected approximately 100 user stories from managers across 9 functional development programs. Led agile redesign of all development reporting from the ground up. Delivered custom dashboards and reporting solutions tailored to each program.
• Single source of truth: Created unified development data infrastructure. Identified documentation gaps and led comprehensive updates. Established clarity and transparency across operations for 25–30 development staff plus organization-wide touchpoints.
• Communication infrastructure: Led organization-wide adoption of Slack for development communications. Created shared public channels replacing siloed DMs and email threads. Single searchable knowledge base, accelerated team learning.
• Team capability: Funded certification training for 4 development operations team members as Certified Scrum Masters.
• Grants management breakthrough: Process stuck for over 1 year. Quickly identified key gaps and made recommendations for viable MVP. Delivered working MVP in 6 months after joining the project team.
• Budget process and revenue forecasting: Became Finance department's primary contact for all development-related questions. Asked to lead entire budget process as consultant. Created comprehensive budget system from scratch. Provided finance team with development income forecasts up to 5 years out. Finance used Paul's multi-year forecasts for international planning with Greenpeace International.
• Senior leadership: Invited into organizational contingency scenario planning and risk assessment with senior management team.

Result of 6-month engagement: The strategic value delivered was clear enough that Greenpeace invited Paul to join full-time as Development Operations Director in late 2023—serving as right hand to the CDO.

The November 2024 leadership transition

In November 2024, Greenpeace USA's CDO departed. Paul was already serving as Development Operations Director and her right hand. He knew in advance and was prepared—he had a handoff document ready. There was no operational crisis. The team had a solid plan for year-end and needed to execute it.

The stability was the point. The systems Paul had built over the prior 18 months meant the department could absorb a leadership departure without disruption. The team was focused on year-end, not in disarray.

The single most significant decision in the first 30 days was creating a legal defense fund for the organization.

What changed

• Immediate continuity: Took full ownership of development operations. No ramp-up, no knowledge gap, no uncertainty about direction. The team had continuity from day one because the systems were already in place.
• Team stability: Made himself available, stayed visible, addressed concerns, maintained morale. Team-first approach throughout.
• Revenue protection: Directed flawless execution of the year-end strategy through the highest-stakes fundraising period of the year.
• Board communication: Delivered executive updates with transparency and confidence.
• Monthly giving ROI: Redesigned acquisition inputs to prioritize retention quality over volume. Brought in new vendor partners aligned with quality-first approach. Within 12 months, the program went from never recouping acquisition cost to modeling a 55% fully loaded ROI for each monthly cohort at the end of 5 years.

Outcomes

If your organization is facing this

Leadership gaps during year-end are the highest-risk scenario in nonprofit fundraising. The single most important factor in avoiding disruption is having someone already embedded who knows the revenue drivers, the team dynamics, and exactly where the risk is. That is what interim and fractional leadership is for.

See Interim Executive Leadership for how this works. Or book a call if you are in this situation now.