Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership

392: What Funders Are Seeing, Funding & Prioritizing Right Now (Clark Casteel, Hal Cato, Darrin Goss, Sr., Rhett Mabry)

Episode Summary

Most nonprofit leaders guess at a funder's real priorities until the rejection letter arrives. Recorded live from the Across State Lines webinar Patton moderated, this episode brings four voices at once: Clark Casteel (Danville Regional Foundation), Hal Cato (Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee), Darrin Goss, Sr. (Coastal Community Foundation), and Rhett Mabry (The Duke Endowment), comparing what they fund, how far they go beyond the grant check, and how they measure impact. Listeners get a clear read on how four foundations actually decide, measure and partner.

Clark Casteel, President and CEO, Danville Regional Foundation

Leads the Dan River Region's 20-year economic transformation effort in Virginia and North Carolina.

• Beyond Grantmaking: Reimagining the Potential of the Community Foundation in Its Second Century
• The SMURF capitals framework
• Philanthropy and Equity: Private Philanthropy and the New Normal — Ambassador James Joseph
• The Cultivation Approach to Place-Based Philanthropy — Doug Easterling
• Collaborative Leadership: How Citizens and Civic Leaders Can Make a Difference and The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook — David Chrislip
• Collab Lab, a collaboration initiative with Chrislip

Hal Cato, CEO, Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee

Leads Nashville's largest nonprofit, pushing funders from parallel play toward real collaboration.

• A Sector in Crisis: How U.S. Nonprofits and Foundations Are Responding to Threats — Center for Effective Philanthropy

Darrin Goss, Sr., President and CEO, Coastal Community Foundation

Leads the foundation serving nine coastal South Carolina counties, with a growing impact-investing arm.

• Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough — Mark Friedman, on Results-Based Accountability
• Results-Based Accountability overview and implementation guide

Rhett Mabry, President, The Duke Endowment

Leads Carolinas funding for health care, child and family well-being, higher education and rural churches.

• Candid and Foundation Directory Online
• Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management — Harvard Business School
• Blue Meridian Partners

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium
• Join the Spring 2027 Mastermind Leadership Program
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

Episode 391: Deeper, Not Bigger: How to Make the Case for Capacity (Jimmy McQuilkin)

Episode Summary

Most capital campaigns fund something new, a building, a wing, more seats. Jimmy McQuilkin, Founder and Executive Director of UrbanPromise Charlotte, built a six-million-dollar campaign to fund something nonprofit leaders rarely ask for: getting better. McQuilkin traces his path from a Teach For America classroom to a summer running UrbanPromise Honduras, and the 2013 leap that became UrbanPromise Charlotte’s twenty-year model of reaching, raising, and restoring through its Street Leader program. He walks through the strategic planning process that surfaced three tensions, pandemic-strained families, an overloaded team, and infrastructure that hadn’t kept pace, and how that became the Rooted for Restoration campaign, now past six million dollars, with Armstrong McGuire’s feasibility study and an early gift that funded staff salary increases before public fundraising even began. Listeners will walk away with a model for asking donors to invest in quality and people, not just capacity for more.

About Jimmy

Jimmy McQuilkin is Founder and Executive Director of UrbanPromise Charlotte, which has grown from one site to four across the city, serving nearly 700 children, youth, and young adults through a twenty-year model built around its Street Leader program, where high schoolers are employed and mentored to lead the younger students coming up behind them. A Spanish and economics double major at Wake Forest University, he came to Charlotte through Teach For America, teaching Spanish and coaching basketball for four years at Philip O. Berry High School, before a summer running UrbanPromise Honduras convinced him to found UrbanPromise Charlotte in 2013. Thirteen years in, he now leads the organization’s six-million-dollar-plus Rooted for Restoration campaign. He also walked on to Wake Forest’s basketball team as a student manager, something he describes, self-deprecatingly, as his own version of Rudy.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium
• Jimmy’s LinkedIn | UrbanPromise Charlotte
• Book recommendation: Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries
• Join the Spring 2027 Mastermind!
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership | ArmstrongMcGuire.com

Episode 390: How People Work: 4 Things Every Nonprofit Leader Should Know (Nancy Bacon)

Episode Summary

Most nonprofit leaders assume that passion is enough, that a motivated team is simply a team that cares, and that a performance problem is a training problem. Nancy Bacon, Founder of Nancy Bacon Consulting and co-founder of the Nonprofit Learning Center in Seattle, spent this conversation taking that apart, one piece of research at a time. She walks through self-determination theory’s three levers for real motivation (autonomy, competence and relatedness), the difference between busy and engaged (illustrated by a parent who dropped crumbs around the house just to get his kids vacuuming instead of picking up Legos), and why she rebranded a dreaded finance training as “Finance Unlocked for Nonprofits,” using Jonathan Haidt’s rider-and-elephant metaphor to show why emotion, not information, drives most decisions. She closes on the knowing-doing gap, why telling someone something once rarely changes what they do next. Listeners will walk away with a sharper diagnostic for the vague complaint “my board isn’t engaged,” and a reminder that curiosity, not another training, is usually the fix.

About Nancy

Nancy Bacon is Founder of Nancy Bacon Consulting and co-founder of the Nonprofit Learning Center in Seattle, where she designs performance-based learning for nonprofit leaders and teaches other trainers how to teach well. She also leads the Whitworth University Nonprofit Certificate Program. Her path to the sector was not a straight line. She started college as a double major in economics and German literature, intent on a career in international business in Germany, before running an ESL school, teaching in the Philippines, and eventually founding an international education program at Seattle’s World Affairs Council, building it from nothing to a staff of six. She later spent eight years with Washington state’s nonprofit association. Along the way she received the Golden Apple Award, and her recent work includes a Nonprofit Management Certificate for rural leaders with the Innovia Foundation and Whitworth University. Twenty-five years in, she still calls herself a student of how people actually learn.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium
• Nancy’s LinkedIn | Nancy Bacon Consulting
• Book recommendation: Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn and her newer Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change
• Join the Spring 2027 Mastermind!
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership | ArmstrongMcGuire.com

Episode 389: How to Stop Being the Invisible Sector (Dr. Mariane Asad Doyle)

Episode Summary

Ask a nonprofit leader about advocacy and you will usually hear one of two things: there is no time for it, or it is lobbying and therefore off limits. Dr. Mariane Asad Doyle, Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Charlottesville, Virginia, takes both apart. Advocacy, she argues, is simply legislative education, and the line that actually matters is a bill. If you are pushing a specific piece of legislation you are lobbying, which you are still permitted to do so long as you track it, report it and keep it proportionate to your mission. Everything short of that is relationship building, and her argument is that the sector's real problem is not legal exposure but invisibility. Doyle also talks about following a fifteen-year executive director, chairing her regional chamber of commerce, and why she treats collaboration as a competency rather than a personality trait. Listeners will walk away knowing what they are actually allowed to do, and where to start on Monday.

About Mariane

Dr. Mariane Asad Doyle is Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, the Virginia association that serves as a learning partner, advisor and legislative voice for nonprofits across the Commonwealth, and which marks its twentieth anniversary this year. She stepped into the role in 2024, following a predecessor who had led the organization for fifteen years. Her background is education. She has taught in higher education for roughly twenty-five years, and her doctoral research examined the career pathways of women in K-12 administration, where she found that women tend to take a meandering road to end up exactly where they need to be. She has been nonprofit adjacent her whole career, starting as a volunteer at the Braille Institute in Southern California. She also chairs the Charlottesville Regional Chamber, a habit she traces to a childhood spent tagging along to Chamber after-hours events with her father.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium
• Mariane's LinkedIn | Center for Nonprofit Excellence
• Mariane's appearance #358, What Nonprofit Leaders Need Now: Guidance from Four Sector Experts
• National Council of Nonprofits, to find the state association where you are
• CNE's 20th Anniversary Philanthropy Day Luncheon, Wednesday, October 28 in Keswick, VA
• Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, and his new Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI, out October 20
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire

Episode 388: Why Half of Your Week Isn't in Your Job Description (Cyril Jefferson)

Episode Summary

Most nonprofit leaders can feel that the week has gotten away from them, but very few can prove it, which makes the conversation with a board sound like complaining rather than evidence. Cyril Jefferson, Mayor of High Point, North Carolina, spent years on the other side of that problem as a consultant, and his fix is a four-week time audit: log every task in a spreadsheet as you do it, add a row each time something new appears, and at the end of 160 hours read what the sheet says. One leader discovered she was spending 40 percent of her time on her actual job description. He pairs it with an accountability chart that routinely shows a CEO carrying 70 functions while the program director carries 20. Jefferson also traces his own path from a Communities In Schools student to a site coordinator to City Hall, and makes the case for why the nonprofit sector sits where neither business nor government can operate. Listeners will walk away with a way to turn the feeling of overload into data somebody can act on.

About Cyril

Cyril Jefferson is Mayor of High Point, North Carolina, elected in November 2023 and sworn in at 31, and he serves as Industry Practice Director at Stratagon, where he leads the agency's higher education practice. He came to that role when Stratagon acquired Change Often, the social innovation firm he founded to work on social and economic challenges. His path ran through Communities In Schools, first as a High Point student the local affiliate served and later as a site coordinator splitting his employment between the nonprofit and the school district, where a student who fell through the cracks became the reason he ran for office. He was elected to City Council in 2019, and he is currently the Democratic nominee for North Carolina's Sixth Congressional District. His wife is a nonprofit executive director, he is a self-described spreadsheet guy who loves a good SUMIF, and he once officiated the wedding of a former student.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium
• Cyril's LinkedIn | City of High Point
• Communities In Schools, the national dropout prevention network that served him as a student
• Stratagon
• Book recommendation: The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
• Conference for NC Nonprofits, October 20-21, 2026 in Concord. Use code PATH26 for discount, or PATHMEM for $100 off through October 19 if you're already a member!
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire

Episode 387: How to Build Something That Keeps Giving

Episode Summary

Most leaders build as though time is unlimited, and the idea that would matter most sits in a notebook waiting on money that never arrives. William McNeely, Founder and CEO of Do Greater Charlotte, stopped thinking that way in 2017, and six weeks after a double lung transplant, with no money and no staff, he was on a stage pitching an organization built around one sentence he had written himself: commit to doing something greater that will keep giving when you are no longer able to give. He tells the story of driving around Charlotte until he found a trashed step van, buying it for $1,500, and turning it into a mobile technology lab that taught kids in cul-de-sacs. That truck proved the concept behind an 8,000 square foot creative lab on the west side, then Sparkhouse Uptown, a $5 million renovation of Harvey Gantt's old architecture office. Listeners will walk away with a way to move an idea into action before the resources show up, and a filter for which ideas deserve to survive.

About William

William McNeely is Founder and CEO of Do Greater Charlotte, which moves youth and young adults from idea to income through programs in entrepreneurship, AI and innovation, and the creative trades. He spent more than twenty years in corporate technology, most of it with Apple in educational technology, and also taught school and coached youth football before a health crisis ended that career and turned him back toward the west Charlotte neighborhoods he grew up in. He launched Do Greater during COVID with a renovated step van, grew it into an 8,000 square foot creative lab inside an underused church, and in 2026 opened Sparkhouse Uptown, a 20,000 square foot hub at 500 North Tryon with a coffee shop, co-working space, screen printing press and full digital studio. Charlotte Magazine named him one of its 2025 Charlotteans of the Year. His wife of 35 years is part of the team and is, by his own account, the original pushback on every idea he brings home.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium
• William's LinkedIn | Do Greater Charlotte
• Raj Chetty's economic mobility research
• Book recommendations: Originals and Hidden Potential, both by Adam Grant
• Conference for NC Nonprofits, October 20-21, 2026 in Concord, where William is a featured speaker. Use code PATH26 for discount, or PATHMEM for $100 off through October 19 if you're already a member!
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire

Episode 386: How to Build on Your Community Capital as a Nonprofit Leader (Dan Bevels)

Episode Summary

Plenty of nonprofit professionals talk themselves out of executive roles because their resume does not show years of philanthropic experience. Dan Bevels, President of the Atrium Health Floyd-Polk Foundation in Rome, Georgia, nearly did exactly that, and applied only after his wife and a mentor pushed him. He walks through the case he made in place of the credentials he lacked: that what he did not know could be taught, and that fifteen years of relationships across northwest Georgia would take anyone else years to build. He describes meeting one-on-one with all seventeen of his board members in his first year, mostly to listen; why the foundation asks grant applicants who they are collaborating with, and makes introductions when the answer is no one; and how a young foundation is shifting from funding programs to attacking the causes underneath them. Listeners will walk away with a way to make the case for a role their resume does not obviously fit, and a clearer sense of what a funder is actually listening for.

About Dan

Dan Bevels is President of the Atrium Health Floyd-Polk Foundation, an independent supporting foundation of Atrium Health Floyd in Rome, Georgia, that works on the social drivers of health across northwest Georgia, from food insecurity and housing to access to care. He studied broadcast journalism and expected a life in radio and television, then moved into corporate communications once the hours and relocation ruled out the family life he wanted. He joined what was then Floyd Medical Center in 2009, having suggested half as a joke that they hire him rather than keep calling with freelance projects, and later served as Director of Community Health. The foundation was created when Floyd joined Atrium Health in 2021, and Bevels stepped into the top job on January 11, walking straight into grant application season. He grew up in a blue-collar family in the county he now serves, started working at fourteen, and still opens conversations in nearby towns with memories of swimming at Peaks Park.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium
• Dan's LinkedIn | Atrium Health Floyd-Polk Foundation
• Dogwood Health Trust
• Book recommendations: Upstream by Dan Heath, and The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff Woods
• Conference for NC Nonprofits, October 20-21, 2026 in Concord. Use code PATH26 for discount, or PATHMEM for $100 off through October 19 if you're already a member!
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire

385: No Margin, No Mission: Building Nonprofits That Last (Cecilia Haag)

Episode Summary

Nonprofit leaders are told that the urgency of the mission will carry the organization, and that financial and operational discipline is something the corporate world worries about. Cecilia Haag, President of Thompson Impact Consulting, came out of that corporate world, joining the 140-year-old human services organization Thompson as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer after watching it decide to take its model across six to seven southern states. She walks through what that growth actually required: a Tennessee expansion that added roughly a hundred staff at once, a Network Integration Mapping process so nothing is missed when a new program opens, a ninety-day minimum before anyone expects footing, and a weekly, monthly and quarterly operating rhythm that starts with how the team won the week. She also names the red flag that ends a partnership conversation, an unwillingness to talk about what the work actually costs. Listeners will walk away with a working definition of discipline, a short list of the numbers worth watching, and a case for building leaders before the opening exists.

About Cecilia

Cecilia Haag is President of Thompson Impact Consulting, the practice that grew out of Thompson, a 140-year-old human services organization founded in Charlotte and now operating across the South. She spent most of her career in the for-profit sector helping growing organizations build the infrastructure to scale, and was at Insperity when Thompson became one of her clients during the COVID and social justice period, watching the organization work through the strategic planning that set its growth path. She joined as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, spent her first years examining where Thompson could absorb more growth, and helped carry the mission into new markets including Tennessee and Seminole County, Florida. When peer organizations started asking how Thompson had done it, Thompson Impact Consulting was the answer. A mother of a high schooler and a middle schooler, she runs her own year on a Full Focus Planner and sits down with her husband every couple of years to decide where the family is headed.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium: https://inperium.org
• Conference for NC Nonprofits, October 20-21, 2026 in Concord. Use code PATH26 for discount: https://www.ncnonprofits.org. Already a member? Use code PATHMEM for $100 off through October 19!
• Cecilia's LinkedIn; Thompson Impact Consulting: https://thompsonimpact.com/
• Chop Wood, Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf
• The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

Episode 384: How to Launch a Planned Giving Program in One Week (Tony Martignetti)

Episode Summary

Small and mid-sized nonprofits routinely tell themselves that planned giving belongs to hospitals and universities, that it takes a lawyer and a brochure to begin, and that raising it with a donor means starting a conversation about death. Tony Martignetti, founder of Planned Giving Accelerator and host of Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, has worked in planned giving since 1997 and spent more than twenty years consulting almost exclusively with small and mid-sized shops, and he takes apart every one of those assumptions here. He walks through the three-step, one-week launch at the center of his new book: query your database for loyalty rather than capacity, including the donor whose average gift is five dollars sustained across twenty-five years; start with gifts in wills and nothing else; then ask three to five of those donors, face to face, whether they would consider including you in their will, and stop talking. Listeners will walk away with a program they can launch next week, with no wealth screening and no legal expertise required.

About Tony

Tony Martignetti is the founder of Planned Giving Accelerator, through which he has devoted his practice to launching planned giving programs at small and mid-sized nonprofits, and the author of Planned Giving Accelerated, publishing September 15. He went to law school, practiced for two years, disliked it enough to re-engineer his career entirely, and entered planned giving in 1997 as a frontline fundraiser and director of planned giving, first at a college and then at a university, before beginning his consulting work in 2003. He has hosted Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio for more than sixteen years, covering the full range of what small and mid-sized shops wrestle with, and his stated goal is to help at least a thousand organizations start a planned giving program. He is also, by his own description, an Italian and a big hugger, the kind of fundraiser who will get up and embrace a donor who has just said yes.

Resources

• Thanks to our podcast partner, Inperium: inperium.org
• Tony’s new book, Planned Giving Accelerated, publishing September 15 wherever books are sold. Join the waitlist at plannedgivingaccelerated.com
• Tony’s website, home to his Planned Giving Accelerator work and his podcast, Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio: tonymartignetti.com
• Tony's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tonymartignetti
• Book recommendation: Planned Giving Simplified by Robert F. Sharpe Sr. (Wiley)
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: ArmstrongMcGuire.com

Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership | ArmstrongMcGuire.com

383: What Nonprofit Leaders Get Wrong About Growing Fast (Steve Isom)

Episode Summary

Nonprofit professionals often come to the sector craving mission, not metrics, and the discomfort that creates around money, growth, and hard numbers can quietly limit how far an organization goes. Steve Isom, Chief Operating and Financial Officer at Bloomerang, has spent nearly six years professionalizing the finance, operations, and customer functions behind the giving platform that now serves more than 24,000 nonprofits, and in this conversation he draws a direct line between his own path from Wall Street investment banking to nonprofit-adjacent leadership and the mindset shifts he sees separating scarcity-minded organizations from ones that grow without losing themselves. He talks candidly about scaling Bloomerang from 114 employees to roughly 600 without sacrificing the culture that built it, why hiring the “great people” leaders think they can’t afford is usually the real unlock, and the three principles now guiding Bloomerang’s approach to AI: mission is the metric, the relationship stays human, and your data stays yours. Listeners will walk away with a clearer case for treating fundraising and finance as fuel for the mission rather than a distraction from it, and a practical framework for growing fast without losing what made their organization work in the first place.

About Steve

Steve Isom is the Chief Operating and Financial Officer at Bloomerang, an Omaha, NE-based giving platform that unifies CRM, fundraising, and volunteer management for more than 24,000 nonprofit customers. He began his career in investment banking on Wall Street before moving into private equity investing in technology companies, then ran FP&A and finance for high-growth tech companies. He joined Bloomerang nearly six years ago, brought in by JMI Equity to professionalize the company’s finance, accounting, legal, and IT functions, and earlier this year expanded his role to lead Bloomerang’s customer organization as well, overseeing support, onboarding, and customer success. Isom serves on multiple nonprofit boards and has met with more than 100 Bloomerang customers in person over the past five years. Outside the office, he’s a self-described “Type A” list-maker who still writes everything on scrap paper before consolidating it each night, and a devoted LEGO collector who runs his own LEGO fan account on Instagram.

Resources

• Steve’s LinkedIn
• Bloomerang
• Bloomerang’s three AI principles: mission is the metric, the relationship stays human, your data stays yours
• Bonus: Steve’s LEGO fan account, @lego_doug_not_dad on Instagram
• Book recommendation: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (not a past guest)
• Join the Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy! www.institutepl.org
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership — and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire — ArmstrongMcGuire.com

Episode 382: From Shoe Drive to Global Movement (Andrew Lovedale)

Episode Summary

Too many nonprofit founders assume that the people who love them will automatically support the mission they've built, and few learn how costly that assumption is until donors who cheer from the sidelines never actually give. Andrew Lovedale, Founder and Executive Director of Access to Success (A2S), learned that lesson firsthand after a shoe drive he started as a Davidson College basketball player, whose run to the 2008 NCAA Elite Eight alongside teammate Steph Curry helped raise the first 10,000 pairs, grew into a nonprofit now serving thousands of children and families across Nigeria. He walks through how A2S evolved from handing out shoes to building a longitudinal, community-designed model that spans an after-school academy, university scholarships, and entrepreneurship programs; how he rebuilt his donor base from scratch once his own athletic platform faded; and why he now asks donors to treat their giving like a long-term investment rather than a quick transaction. Listeners will walk away with a sharper way to build donor relationships around shared passion rather than personal affection, and a reminder that sustainable impact takes years, not headlines.

About Andrew

Andrew Lovedale is the Founder and Executive Director of Access to Success (A2S), a Davidson, NC-based nonprofit that provides sustainable, holistic programs for Nigerian children and their communities, from an after-school academy and university scholarships to workforce development and entrepreneurship initiatives that now reach roughly 10,000 people a year. Born and raised in Nigeria, he earned a basketball scholarship to Davidson College, where he and teammate Steph Curry led the Wildcats to the 2008 NCAA Elite Eight before he moved on to a brief professional basketball career. What began as a personal shoe drive for friends back home, sparked by a moment in the Davidson equipment room, grew over more than 15 years into A2S's current ecosystem model, which has produced results ranging from students turned software engineers to a former A2S scholar who became a medical doctor in her twenties. Lovedale now leads A2S's two boards, one in the U.S. and one in Nigeria, as the organization pursues a dual sustainability strategy aimed at generating 25 percent of its revenue from Nigeria by 2035, and he still travels there each quarter to host A2S Community Talks, the sessions where the people A2S serves help shape what the organization does next.

Resources

• Andrew's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lovedale-81b40833/
• Access to Success (A2S): https://a2sfoundation.org
• A2S Community Talk (ACT): the quarterly town hall sessions Andrew holds in Nigeria to gather direct feedback from staff, scholars, and community members, now also held for U.S. donors
• Book recommendation: When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert
• Join the Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy! www.institutepl.org
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: ArmstrongMcGuire.com

Episode 381: What Leaders Must Know to Build Cross-Sector Power (Karen Riordan)

Episode Summary

Nonprofit leaders often assume advocacy, cross-sector partnerships, and funding diversification are someone else's job — but Karen Riordan, President & CEO of Together SC in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, argues that building real power for the sector starts with everyday relationship-building. Drawing on three decades of for-profit marketing experience before her move into nonprofit leadership, Riordan makes the case that nonprofits are businesses too, deserving of the same respect, visibility, and strategic rigor as any company in the community. She shares how to build relationships with lawmakers long before you ever need something from them, why chambers of commerce and civic groups are an underused bridge to the business community, and how to have hard budget conversations with your board before a funding crisis forces the issue. Listeners will walk away with concrete, low-lift ways to build cross-sector alliances, advocate for their organization without feeling like a lobbyist, and lead with pride even when the funding landscape feels shaky.

About Karen

Karen Riordan is President & CEO of Together SC (formerly the South Carolina Nonprofit Association), the statewide network that strengthens and champions the nonprofit sector across South Carolina, a role she stepped into in 2024. She spent three decades building brands in the for-profit world, first in the tourism industry and later in automotive marketing, where she managed teams of up to 1,200 employees, before moving into the nonprofit space by way of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, where she founded both Keep Myrtle Beach Beautiful and Partnership Grand Strand. A journalism graduate who has volunteered for nonprofits since high school - across subsectors from animal welfare to food insecurity - Riordan now channels that business rigor and marketing instinct into raising the visibility and respect of nonprofits statewide. She's an avowed re-reader of Jim Collins' Good to Great and a self-described “maniac” for a good thriller series in her downtime.

Resources

• Karen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-riordan-72a88a2/
• Together SC: https://www.togethersc.org
• Check out Together SC's “Nonprofits Get It Done” campaign (modeled on the National Council of Nonprofits) and their upcoming scenario-planning workshops for budget diversification
• Book recommendation: Impact Networks by David Ehrlichman
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

#380: Relationships Shape Everything: What Leaders Must Know to Build Community (David “Dae-Lee” Arrington)

Episode Summary

Many nonprofit leaders believe they've built real community and trust within their organizations — but David “Dae-Lee” Arrington argues that what looks like connection is often just proximity, and that gap is costing leaders more than they realize. Founder and CEO of Bridge Builder Leadership in Charlotte, NC, Dae-Lee shares how his own journey - from a Black, working-class neighborhood in Norfolk, Virginia to a mostly white, affluent Charlotte suburb at age nineteen - sparked a career spent helping leaders move from transactional relationships to transformational ones. He introduces the idea that “growth can hide fragmentation,” explains why psychological safety and trust function as an under-built layer of leadership infrastructure, and walks through the three-question framework: Who Am I? Who Are They? Who Are We? that grounds his Bridge Builder cohorts. Listeners will walk away with a concrete first step for building trust across difference, and a challenge to examine whether their own relationships are truly authentic or simply convenient.

About Dae-Lee

David “Dae-Lee” Arrington is the Founder and CEO of Bridge Builder Leadership, a Charlotte, NC-based organization that builds relational capacity and trust infrastructure among leaders across sectors, race, and generation. Raised in the Huntersville neighborhood of Norfolk, Virginia, he moved to Charlotte at nineteen in 2001, an experience that reshaped how he thought about community and connection across difference. He studied multimedia web design at the Art Institute of Charlotte and spent his early career split between the tech and entertainment worlds, working as a producer and recording artist while using music to bring people together in Charlotte's faith community and later as part of the Creative Mornings leadership team. Prompted by conversations with fellow leaders following the death of Keith Lamont Scott in 2016 and the events of 2020, Dae-Lee launched Bridge Builder Leadership to help leaders build the relational foundation - self-awareness, trust, and authentic connection - that he believes is missing from most leadership development. Over the past five years, he has led ten cohorts of leaders through that work, and describes himself, fittingly, as “an introverted lover of people.”

Resources

• Dae-Lee's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daeleebridgebuilder/
• Bridge Builder Leadership website: https://www.webridgebuild.com
• “Growth Can Hide Fragmentation” (read and add your voice!): https://www.webridgebuild.com/growth-can-hide-fragmentation
• Book recommendation: The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire

379: How to Treat Every Donor Like a Major Donor (Derric Bakker)

Episode Summary

Nonprofit leaders and fundraisers are exhausted, and the instinct when results slip is to simply work harder. In this episode of Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, Derric Bakker, Founder & CEO of DickersonBakker, argues that today’s struggle is not a down cycle teams can out-hustle but a structural shift in how people give, driven by demographics, the widening wealth gap, fraying community and religious ties, and donors who now expect the personalized experience every consumer brand delivers. Returning after his 2022 conversation (Episode #181), Derric makes the provocative case behind his new book: the relational behaviors long reserved for the top 1 percent of major donors, listening first, personalizing every touchpoint, stewarding consistently, and protecting trust, can become the operating system for fundraising at every level. He explains where AI makes that possible at scale, where it must never replace the human on the other end, and what a practical first step looks like, from rethinking donor survey data to reimagining portfolio size and gratitude. Listeners come away with a clear-eyed diagnosis of why the old model broke and a hopeful sense of the leadership and board decisions that move an organization toward a better way.

About Derric

Derric Bakker is the Founder & CEO of DickersonBakker, a fundraising consulting and agency firm that helps nonprofit organizations grow, thrive, and make a bigger impact, with a team of more than 50 working with over 100 clients a year. Across more than three decades in the sector, Derric moved through three chapters, roughly a decade as a frontline practitioner, a decade in consulting, and leadership of the firm he launched in 2010 that later merged to become DickersonBakker, and he is now entering a fourth focused on writing, teaching, and thought leadership as Andrew Olson takes the helm as president. Mentored early in his career by the legendary Jerry Panas, Derric built his expertise on relationship-based major gift fundraising, the foundation of his new book. Reflecting on the pace of change, he often points out that nearly everything about the work has been transformed by technology since he started, yet many of fundraising’s core assumptions have stubbornly stayed the same.

Resources

• Connect with Derric Bakker on LinkedIn and learn more about DickersonBakker
• Derric’s book: A Better Way to Fundraise: Treat Every Donor Like a Major Donor — explore the book and discussion guides at https://betterwaychampions.org/
• Recommended reading: Nonprofit AI by Nathan Chappell (who, with Brian Crimmins, was a past guest on Episode #211, Is Philanthropy in a State of Crisis?)
• Registration is open for Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy - Learn more at https://www.institutepl.org
• Learn more about Inperium, a nonprofit that helps health and human services organizations grow without sacrificing their mission: https://inperium.org
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com/

378: The Money Myths Holding Your Nonprofit Back (Sean Hale)

Episode Summary

Too many nonprofit leaders quietly avoid their own finances, trusting that a clean audit or a capable CPA means everything is handled, and that blind spot can put a mission at real risk. In this episode, Patton talks with Sean Hale, founder of Nonprofit CFOs, who busts five money myths that hold organizations back: that the audit has them covered, that finance is the CPA’s job, that nonprofits aren’t supposed to make a profit, that confusing financial reports are just part of the territory, and that you say yes to whatever a funder asks. Drawing on more than two decades inside the sector and a contrarian, plain-English style, Sean explains what a standard audit actually does and doesn’t catch, why a whistleblower policy and strong internal controls protect an organization far more than people realize, how an executive director can engage with the numbers in twenty minutes a month without becoming a bookkeeper, and why building a modest annual surplus is one of the smartest things a board can do. Listeners will walk away with practical, doable steps to raise financial literacy across their whole organization and the confidence to push back when a grant simply isn’t worth the cost.

About Sean

Sean Hale is the founder of Nonprofit CFOs, a team of finance and accounting professionals who provide nonprofits across the country with bookkeeping, fractional and interim CFO support, and special projects such as grant due diligence. His path into the sector started early: his mother led a nonprofit for thirty years, and his first job there involved pushing a broom for minimum wage. As an adult, Sean has worked in the sector since 1999, wearing nearly every hat across four different nonprofits over twenty-one years before launching his own practice. He found that he could make the biggest difference in the finance and administrative side of the work, helping organizations get their operations buttoned up so they can focus on mission. Known on LinkedIn for his sassy, contrarian, and occasionally grumpy take on nonprofit finance, Sean is on a mission to help leaders ditch the jargon, ask better questions, and stop accepting the pain.

Resources

• Connect with Sean on LinkedIn; Nonprofit CFOs
• Get Sean’s Financial Dashboard Starter Kit, free with code PATTON2026 at https://www.nonprofitcfos.com
• The Thief in Your Company by Tiffany Couch
• Learn more about Inperium, a nonprofit that helps health and human services organizations grow without sacrificing their mission: https://inperium.org
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership at https://www.armstrongmcguire.com/podcasts
• Find more leadership resources at https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

377: Stop Pushing Harder: How Great Nonprofits Build Momentum (Suzanne Smith)

Episode Summary

Nonprofit leaders are exhausted, pushing harder and still feeling stuck. Suzanne Smith, Founder and CEO of Social Impact Architects, offers a different path. Drawing on sixteen years of consulting and her forthcoming book, The Nonprofit Flywheel, she reframes Jim Collins’s flywheel for the social sector: translate business practices, don’t transplant them. Suzanne walks through the six elements, impact, brand, revenue, and operations, held together by culture and governance, and explains why momentum builds only when all six align. She shares proof from the TACA arts accelerator in Dallas, where participating organizations saw average budgets rise roughly 40 percent and foundation support climb 77 percent, then challenges leaders to rethink old norms through what she calls Nonprofit 2.0. Listeners walk away with a practical diagnostic for finding the friction in their own organizations and a reminder that lasting impact comes from working smarter, not harder.

About Suzanne

Suzanne Smith is the Founder and CEO of Social Impact Architects, a social change agency in Dallas, Texas, that helps nonprofits, government agencies, and cross-sector systems move from stuck to strategic. Describing herself as “trilingual” in nonprofit, government, and business, Suzanne began her career as a lobbyist after earning a government degree from the University of Texas, then went on to complete her MBA at Duke, where she studied social entrepreneurship under pioneer Greg Dees. Over the past sixteen years she has founded nonprofits, served as a board chair, and taught the next generation of social entrepreneurs as an educator and consultant. She writes the Social TrendSpotter newsletter, a top nonprofit publication on Substack, and her TEDx talk, Everyone Is a Changemaker, reflects her belief that anyone can make a difference. She calls herself half therapist, half mechanic, a nod to her therapist mother and her love of finding the right tools to get unstuck.

Resources

• Connect with Suzanne on LinkedIn; Social Impact Architects; https://meetsuzanne.com
• Social TrendSpotter - Suzanne’s weekly newsletter on the future of the social sector
• TEDx talk: Everyone Is a Changemaker
• The Nonprofit Flywheel: A Playbook for Sustainable Growth, Smarter Strategy, and Lasting Impactby Suzanne Smith, launching October 1, 2026, with a free digital edition and companion resources
• The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) by David Emerald
• Learn more about Inperium, a nonprofit that helps health and human services organizations grow without sacrificing their mission: https://inperium.org
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership at https://www.armstrongmcguire.com/podcasts
• Find more leadership resources at https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

Episode 376: Who Should Be Part of Your Strategic Planning Process? (Renee Rubin Ross)

Episode Summary

Too many strategic plans end up gathering dust on a shelf, or worse, frustrating the very people who were left out of building them. In this episode, Renee Rubin Ross, Ph.D., Founder of The Ross Collective and author of the new book Inclusive Strategic Planning, makes the case that who you involve in planning matters just as much as the plan itself. Drawing on more than twenty planning processes, she walks through her five-step spiral, kickoff, discovery, prioritization, planning, and implementation, and introduces a simple framework for deciding who belongs in the room: deciders, builders, and sharers. Renee explains how to know whether your organization is even ready to plan, how to scale the work up or down when capacity and funding feel shaky, and how to keep a plan alive through consistent communication and disciplined implementation. Nonprofit leaders will come away with a practical, inclusive approach that turns planning into a source of energy, alignment, and focus rather than another document destined for the shelf.

About Renee

Dr. Renee Rubin Ross is a recognized leader in board and organizational development and strategy, and the founder of The Ross Collective, a consulting firm that designs and leads inclusive, participatory processes for social sector boards and staff. Committed to racial equity in the nonprofit sector, she guides leaders and organizations through strategic plans and governance processes that deepen social change, racial justice, engagement, and community strength. Renee is the author of Inclusive Strategic Planning: A Five-Step Process to Expand Energy, Alignment, and Opportunity. She also directs the Nonprofit Management Certificate program at Cal State University East Bay, where she teaches strategic planning and board development. A past board member of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management and a member of the Technology of Participation facilitators’ network, she earned her doctorate in education and Jewish studies from New York University, where her research explored parent participation in schools. She lives in Northern California.

Resources

• Listen to the episode: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com/podcasts
• Connect with Renee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneerubinross/
• The Ross Collective: https://www.therosscollective.com/
• Inclusive Strategic Planning: A Five-Step Process to Expand Energy, Alignment, and Opportunity
• Book recommendation: My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
• Cal State University East Bay Nonprofit Management Certificate program
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at https://www.armstrongmcguire.com/

375: Outrageous Kindness: A Framework for Unlocking Philanthropic Potential (Kristina Joy Carlson)

Episode Summary

When disruption hits, many nonprofit leaders go quiet and wait for conditions to settle before they act, and that pause quietly signals to donors and communities that the mission can wait too. In Episode 375, Kristina Joy Carlson, CFRE, Founder and CEO of Outrageous Kindness, makes the case that perfect is never coming, and that the leaders who keep moving are the ones who build the strongest relationships. Drawing on decades in global philanthropy and a personal season of loss and recovery, she walks Patton through her KIND Method: Know More (challenge the assumptions that quietly kill donor relationships), Impact (reconnect to your own why so authentic passion does the persuading), Navigate (communicate honestly and bring a plan when funding shifts), and Deliver (do what you said, then circle back so people know their gift mattered). Along the way she offers a simple impact audit any leader can run today, a reframe of asking as a muscle you strengthen with use, and a reminder that asking a good question and truly listening may be the most outrageous kindness of all. Listeners will leave with a practical roadmap for leading with generosity when the conditions are anything but ideal.

About Kristina

Kristina Joy Carlson, CFRE, is the Founder and CEO of Outrageous Kindness, a mindset, method, and movement she built to help nonprofit organizations create stronger relationships, healthier cultures, and greater impact. She has spent most of her career in global philanthropy, helping organizations connect with people, engage donors, and grow the resources that fuel their missions, work that took her into campaigns, leadership transitions, and seasons of significant disruption. The daughter of a fundraiser and minister, she learned early that generosity changes the giver, the people around them, and the community, a conviction that now anchors her writing, speaking, and consulting. She is the author of Outrageous Kindness and will keynote the North Carolina Philanthropy Conference on September 3 with a talk titled “Perfect Isn’t Coming.” Based in Oxford, Mississippi, she leads through hard seasons with the same belief she teaches: your circumstances do not define you.

Resources

• Kristina Joy Carlson on LinkedIn
• Outrageous Kindness
• The Seven Faces of Philanthropy by Russ Alan Prince and Karen Maru File
• An American Life by Ronald Reagan
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership — and please leave a review!
• Leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

Episode 374: A Roadmap to Nonprofit Excellence: What Most Leaders Miss (Lauren Deiorio)

Episode Summary

Most nonprofit leaders don’t fail because of mission. They get stuck running one part of the operation well while neglecting the rest, often because they rose through programming and never learned the business of running an organization. In this episode, Lauren Deiorio, President & CEO of the Community Foundation for Ocala/Marion County, shares the Roadmap to Success, a practical tool she helped build that breaks nonprofit excellence into nine “destinations”: governance, HR, financial management, fundraising, communications, technology, strategic collaborations, community empowerment, and grant strategy. Drawing on a finance and public accounting background and nine years leading her foundation, Lauren explains why treating your nonprofit like a business, with engaged boards, strong internal controls, diversified revenue, and clear communications, is what earns donor confidence. She offers a concrete way to put the roadmap to work as a self-assessment, pairing a staff member with a board member on each destination throughout the year. Listeners will walk away with a mental checklist for diagnosing where their organization is strong, where it’s vulnerable, and exactly where to start.

About Lauren

Lauren Deiorio is President & CEO of the Community Foundation for Ocala/Marion County, where she leads a nonprofit resource center dedicated to helping local organizations grow stronger and run more like a business. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Lauren earned a degree in finance and spent years in public accounting before moving into the philanthropic sector, first as the fund development director for her local school district and then, for the past nine years, at the helm of the Community Foundation. A self-described numbers person who joined her local public relations association to sharpen her communications skills, she co-created the foundation’s Roadmap to Success, now in its second edition with an accompanying workbook nonprofits across the region use as a self-study guide. Based near Orlando, she’s a fan of common-sense customer service, and has led her own staff through a book study on the subject.

Resources

• Connect with Lauren: LinkedIn | lauren@ocalafoundation.org
• Community Foundation for Ocala/Marion County: https://www.ocalafoundation.org
• Roadmap to Success: the nine-destination nonprofit handbook and workbook (order at ocalafoundation.org)
• Book recommendation: The Customer Rules by Lee Cockrell
• Also mentioned: Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: https://www.armstrongmcguire.com

#373: Turning Leadership Transitions into Organizational Breakthroughs (Jeffrey R. Wilcox, CFRE)

Episode Summary

Most nonprofits treat leadership change as an emergency to survive rather than a future to plan for — and the cost of that blind spot is mounting. In this episode, Jeffrey R. Wilcox, CFRE (ret), CEO of Third Sector Company and founder of the Interim Executives Academy, names the “perfect storm” that has left the sector unprepared: taboo conversations about people, resource development defined only as money, a scarcity mindset that turns pipelines into pipe dreams, an unmanaged generational shift, and boards and staff running on separate tracks. Drawing on a career that began at United Way and 25 years building the field of interim leadership, Wilcox reframes succession planning as the stewardship of a purpose rather than the replacement of a person, and makes the case for the professionally trained interim executive as a catalyst — not a stopgap — for organizations bridging their proudest past and their hoped-for future. Listeners will come away with a practical, five-part view of what real succession planning requires, a sharper sense of when an interim is the right call, and a renewed conviction that the sector’s most valuable asset has always been its people.

About Jeffrey

Jeffrey R. Wilcox, CFRE (ret), is CEO of Third Sector Company and founder of its Interim Executives Academy and Interim Development Directors BootCamp, and a nationally recognized pioneer in leadership succession solutions for community-impact organizations. An author, columnist, and popular speaker, he advises nonprofits, trade and professional associations, and congregations on succession planning, talent development and retention, and strategic interim executive solutions. His early career was spent at United Way, including as Senior Vice President of Community Development for the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, where he watched countless organizations treat leadership change as a surprise, a project, and an interruption — an experience that became the impetus for the firm he founded in 2002. Since then, Third Sector Company has served more than 900 organizations across the West Coast, Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and Western Canada, and was named a “Top 10” Interim Executive Services firm by Manage HR Magazine in 2023 and 2024; its Academy is the oldest and longest-running certificate program of its kind in the U.S. and Canada. The former nonprofit columnist for the Long Beach Business Journal, Wilcox authored The Nonprofit Leader of the New Decade in 2010 and remains a tireless advocate for returning nonprofit leadership to its cause-based, movement-focused, activist-driven roots.

Resources

• Jeffrey R. Wilcox on LinkedIn
• Third Sector Company — https://thirdsectorcompany.com
• Interim Executives Academy — https://interimexecutivesacademy.com
• Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements by Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, Geno Church, and Spike Jones (Wiley, 2010) — Jeffrey’s book recommendation
• Follow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership — and please leave a review!
• Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire — https://www.armstrongmcguire.com