Fractional executive leadership for mission-driven organizations
Most organizations that call me have a problem they have not named correctly yet.
The campaign stalled, the board went quiet, the numbers stopped moving, and the explanations on offer do not fit.
The beam still spans. That is the problem. Load redistributes to the supports that are holding, and nothing fails visibly until one of those gives.
The Comhar Model
Comhar is the Irish word for cooperative effort.
In old Ireland a comhar was how communities survived. You helped me with my harvest, I helped you with yours. Not a transaction. A mutual commitment to a shared outcome.
The Comhar Model is a diagnostic and intervention framework built on four pillars.
Clarity
Whether the organization can state what it is raising money for in terms a donor can act on.
Readiness
Whether the case, the leadership, and the pipeline can carry the goal that has been set.
Alignment
Board, CEO, and development team operating as one unit. Misalignment at the leadership level is the single most common reason strong organizations underperform.
Infrastructure
CRM, reporting, pipeline management, and campaign architecture built for the scale you are trying to reach, not the scale you started at.
Most engagements begin because one pillar is failing loudly. They usually end somewhere else, because the pillar that fails first is rarely the one causing it.
Track record
More than $130M raised across twenty-five years. Major giving up 219% at a single organization.
Half of that is science. Pipeline design, portfolio math, campaign architecture, and reporting that tells you the truth, anchors the strategy, and shows you where to course correct. That half is teachable, and your team will own it by the time I leave.
The other half is art. Turning a board over without losing the donors attached to it. Knowing which argument will land in which room, and which one will cost you a trustee. Aligning a development team behind the CEO's vision, using the science to test it against reality, then building the pathway that reaches it.
That pathway is usually longer than anyone wants it to be.
Nobody publishes the playbook for the art. That is the more useful conversation, and a better use of thirty minutes than a case study.
Who you would be working with
I have worked across higher education, academic healthcare, youth development, and animal welfare, in organizations ranging from a few staff to a few thousand, with boards that governed well and boards that did not.
Enough variation to know which problems are specific to your organization and which ones are just what happens at your stage.
Senior fundraising and executive leadership for small and mid-sized nonprofits in transition. Greater Boston and Providence. Available nationally and internationally.
How it works
A defined engagement with a stated end.
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01
Free assessment
A short self-assessment across the four pillars. You get the result whether or not we ever speak.
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02
Discovery call
I ask questions and you tell me what is actually happening, before either of us decides whether this is a fit.
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03
Scope
What I will do, what it costs, how long it takes.
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04
Handoff
You keep the plan, the systems, and the relationships. Not a dependency you have to keep paying for.
What working together looks like
I work inside your organization, not alongside it.
Your team, your board, your donors, your calendar. I take the meetings. I write the case. I sit in the conversation about why the campaign target was never achievable.
What you can expect from me
A clear read on what is actually wrong, including when the answer is not fundraising.
What I need from you
Access to the people who make decisions, and a willingness to hear the diagnosis before debating the treatment.
What it is for
A culture of trust, a team that moves together, and a fundraising program performing at the level your donors and your mission have always made possible.
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