Our Consulting and Training Services

Nonprofit Solutions Associates offers extensive consulting and training services to organizations and their boards. Take a look.

Governance and Board Development

• Helps organizations develop an effective governance model and practices specifically tailored to their mission, constituency, programs, and stage of development.
• Assists boards build capacity, practices, and skills to become more effective and strategic.
• Builds productive and positive relationships among board, board leadership, executive director, and staff. 
• Develops effective committees, facilitates improved meeting outcomes, and helps to define inclusive recruitment and retention consistent with organizational philosophy.

Strategic Planning

• Develops a participatory planning process to define future strategic directions, shared values, and shared visions.
• Evaluates organizational strengths and weaknesses, researches and assesses external opportunities and trends, facilitates the development of key long- and short-term strategies, and assists with strategic alliances and collaborations.
• Develops realistic work and business plans for strategic implementation.
• Builds capacity for ongoing strategic thinking and decision-making, planning, and evaluation.

Organizational Transitions

• Helps organizations evaluate and implement new structures that include a wide range of models including strategic alliances, shared services, collaborations, affiliations, acquisitions, and mergers.
• Assists with strategic positioning assessments, helps clients determine the type of structure that best fits their mission and needs, and assists with negotiations.
• Assists organizations with succession planning, staff transitions, and in the development of short- and long-term action plans.

Executive Transition, Search, Succession Planning

• Assists organizations with the challenges that arise around leadership transition
• Helps assess and plan for pending transitions, conducts executive search and recruitment
• Assists with selection process
• Helps organization prepare for new executive and supports new E.D. in her/his new position

Community-wide Assessment and Planning

• Assists individual organizations and communities in bringing multiple stakeholders together around issues of common interest, planning strategic directions, and organizational improvements
• Helps develop large-scale, community-wide action plans and initiatives.
•  Helps organizations and communities establish positive stakeholder and organizational ownership of -- and responsibility for -- implementing change processes.

Program Evaluation/Outcome Measurement

• Serves as an external evaluator for foundations, organizations, and capacity building initiatives.
• Helps organizations design and implement effective outcome-measurement systems for their programs including determining measurable outcomes and indicators, devising the instruments with which to measure them, performing data collection and analysis, and utilizing findings to identify initiatives  and improve programming.

Cultural Competency, Diversity/Inclusion Initiatives

• Uses a multicultural, consulting-team approach to design and conduct cultural audits and assessments, and to design and implement cultural competency and diversity training.
• Develops capacity-building initiatives that assist organizations in developing cultural competency, while helping them to change policies, procedures, and other structures and processes to become more inclusive and accessible.

Human Resource Practices and Executive Coaching

• Defines and implements human resource capacity-building including developing management, supervisory, coaching, and mentoring skills.
• Supports executive directors and other leaders in developing leadership and management skills. Through a dynamic learning partnership, helps leaders design and implement personalized plans for continual learning and growth, and meeting professional goals and organizational priorities.
• Assists with clarifying roles and responsibilities, creating and refining job descriptions, and designing staff and executive director performance evaluations.

Community/Constituency Leadership Development

• Helps staff and boards identify and develop new leaders from their constituency and community, and develop an organizational culture that trains and supports them as effective leaders.
• Assists nonprofits in involving their constituents in creative and meaningful ways.
• Assists in effective coalition-building, and developing community-wide initiatives.

Team Development

• Promotes a team-based management model, and builds team competency.
• Fosters team problem-solving skills and works with "stuck" teams to resolve conflict and implement solutions.
• Facilitates the creation of self-managed teams that increase employee empowerment, participation, and accountability.

Retreat and Meeting Facilitation

• Uses a collaborative approach to determine organizational goals and desired outcomes.
• Custom-designs effective agendum for -- and facilitates effective -- retreats and meetings.   Also works closely with staff to train in-house facilitators.

Membership Development

• Helps design and expand membership and community engagement campaigns, and assists with strategies to integrate members and community members in meaningful ways.

Conflict Management/Mediation

• Assists in the resolution of organizational and individual conflicts, and helps organizations develop productive strategies for self-managed conflict resolution.