Ellie Brown 7/22/26 Ellie Brown 7/22/26

When the Board Is Part of the Fundraising Problem

I recently sat in a strategy session with an Executive Director who was tired of watching her fundraising consultant and staff build a fundraising plan, only to have it stall at board meetings.

It's common for a board member to ask for one more round of data before the campaign can launch, or for another to want to revisit the case for support that the staff already spent three months refining. A third quietly declines to make personal introductions this year, as they have for the last three years. And then there is the board member who holds onto their own contacts tightly, willing to make the ask themselves but unwilling to let staff or the consultant build a relationship with those donors directly, which means every gift from that network runs through one person's calendar and one person's mood. None of these behaviors are specifically meant to sabotage fundraising strategies, and each individual moment looks reasonable on its own, but the cumulative effect is a fundraising strategy that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

Ellie Brown 6/10/26 Ellie Brown 6/10/26

Whose Voice Should Drive Your Strategic Plan?

Strategic planning processes tend to be designed around the people already in the room. Board members complete surveys. Senior staff participate in retreats. A trusted funder or two may weigh in. The resulting plan reflects what those insiders believe the organization should become, and that input carries real weight. And there is something more foundational that most planning processes underutilize: the voice of the people the organization exists to serve.

Ellie Brown 5/28/26 Ellie Brown 5/28/26

Nonprofits can learn to problem-solve like artists

Before I worked in nonprofits, my first career was making artwork and photographs and teaching others how to make them. One of the most important things I learned during that time was not how to use a camera or work in the darkroom, but rather how to look and problem-solve creatively. Artists do not start with a solution; they start with a problem they do not yet fully understand, and they sit with it long enough to interrogate the constraints before committing to a response. That discipline, it turns out, is one of the most useful things I have ever brought into consulting work.

Ellie Brown 5/7/26 Ellie Brown 5/7/26

Your Strategic Plan Needs a Contingency Plan. Here's Why.

One in three nonprofits experienced some form of government funding disruption in the first half of 2025. The organizations that navigated it most steadily were not the ones with the most detailed plans. They were the ones whose plans had been built to flex.

$Thinking about a new staff hire vs. a fractional hire$

Ellie Brown 4/30/26 Ellie Brown 4/30/26

Thinking about a new staff hire vs. a fractional hire

I have been on both sides of this conversation. As a Development Director and later as an Executive Director, I have written job descriptions just like the ones I see in my inbox now, posted them, sifted through applicants, made offers, and then watched new hires spend their first four to six months learning the organization before doing the work I actually needed them to do.

That experience is what I keep thinking about when I look at what's happening in the sector right now. A third of nonprofits experienced federal funding disruptions in the first half of 2025. Hiring plans collapsed. And smaller organizations are still trying to fill development gaps the same way they always have. There is a faster path, and it's worth understanding before you post the job.