The Nonprofit Show

Send us Fan Mail In 2026, nonprofit finance isn’t just about reporting what happened — it’s about shaping what happens next. Ellie Hume (Regional Director, at Your Part-Time Controller) leasds a forward-facing conversation on financial leadership that starts with one powerful idea: your organization’s strongest advantage is what you choose to control. If your nonprofit is ready to “spiral up,” thi...

Send us Fan Mail Why don’t nonprofit boards do their work — and what can executive leaders actually do about it? In this episode we welcome back executive coach, author, and speaker Hardy Smith, creator of the Amazon bestseller Stop the Nonprofit Board Blame Game. Hardy tackles the question nonprofit leaders lose sleep over: when boards underperform, is the problem really “the board”… or the way w...

Send us Fan Mail Organizational assessments can sound intimidating—like a test, a grade, or a “gotcha.” We sit down with Joan Brown, Chief Operations Officer at Third Sector Company , to reframe assessments as one of the smartest business moves a nonprofit can make—especially during leadership transition. Joan explains that a strong organizational assessment is not about blame. It’s a systematic l...

Send us Fan Mail 2026 is already rewriting the fundraising playbook—and your nonprofit can’t afford to run last year’s plays. In this Fundraisers Friday conversation, Julia C. Patrick and Tony Beall lay out the business realities that will separate thriving organizations from the ones that stall out: AI adoption, the Great Wealth Transfer, next-gen talent shifts, and smart technology investment. F...

Send us Fan Mail Nonprofit work is purpose-driven, but the business reality is relentless: tight budgets, heavy caseloads, public scrutiny, and a pace that rarely fits inside “normal hours.” In this episode we welcome Rahul K. Maharaj, known as “Mr. Trauma Talks,” for a timely conversation about stress, trauma, and what leaders must do to protect the people who power the mission. Rahul opens by re...

Send us Fan Mail What if the biggest thing holding your nonprofit back isn’t budget, bandwidth, or the board… but the size of the goal itself? In this energizing conversation, Julia C. Patrick turns the spotlight inward for a rare public coaching session with Keith Ellis, “The Impossible Success Coach.” Together they tackle a leadership problem every nonprofit executive and development team knows...

Send us Fan Mail We welcome Katie Warnock, CEO and Founder of Staffing Boutique , for a “New Year Trend Forecasting” conversation—focused squarely on what nonprofit leaders must do to operate smarter, steadier, and more sustainably. Katie opens with a morale boost that’s grounded in real numbers: philanthropy is getting culturally “cool,” even as many executive directors and development leaders re...

Send us Fan Mail If your nonprofit is staring at a funding gap in 2026: your money problem may actually be a structure problem. Host Julia C. Patrick welcomes Dr. Sharon Elefant of The Nonprofit Plug to talk about why grants and big gifts don’t “save” organizations when the foundation underneath is shaky—things like weak financial controls, unclear governance, founder-centric operations, burnout,...

Send us Fan Mail how nonprofits set goals that actually move revenue, relationships, and results. They start with the metric many teams avoid because it can be a rude awakening: donor retention. Tony walks through a simple way to calculate it, then connects the number to what leaders feel every day, time and budget pressure. His reminder lands like a CFO truth bomb: “The data doesn’t lie.” If your...

Send us Fan Mail Year-end doesn’t “arrive” in nonprofits so much as it ambushes us. And that’s exactly why this conversation with John Tiso, VP of Revenue and Service Delivery at JMT Consulting, and Buu Lình Tran, SVP of Financial Solutions at JMT Consulting , feels like a shot of espresso for your finance, accounting, and operations leadership. Host Julia C. Patrick frames the real business chall...

Send us Fan Mail Starting a nonprofit is often treated like a simple administrative step: fill out a few forms, wait a bit, and you’re off to the races. But in this episode, Julia C. Patrick and cohost Ellie Hume sit down with Christian LeFer, CEO of Instant Nonprofit , to talk about what it really takes to launch—and sustain—a mission-driven organization with business discipline. Christian shares...

Send us Fan Mail Consistency is not glamorous, but it’s the engine that keeps a nonprofit’s business model running when the calendar flips and the pressure spikes. In this conversation with  Matt Glazer, Founder and CEO of Blue Sky Partners (Austin-based, national reach), we talk about building consistent engagement without burning out your team or betting the whole year on a Q4 miracle. Matt brin...

Send us Fan Mail Founder syndrome gets tossed around like a diagnosis, but this conversation reframes it as a leadership and governance challenge that shows up in real nonprofit operations: decision rights, communication, accountability, and the organization’s ability to scale beyond one person’s willpower. Guest Brittan Stockert (Donorbox) opens by rejecting the blame-heavy tone of the phrase and...

Send us Fan Mail Fundraisers Friday is back, and Julia C. Patrick and Tony Beall (Mr. Nonprofit Consultancy) tackle a topic that quietly runs the business side of fundraising: donor tier levels. If you’ve ever stared at your donor list and wondered, “Where do we start, and how do we keep this manageable?” this episode is your playbook. They begin with the “why.” Tony frames donor tiers as a practi...

Send us Fan Mail Finishing the year “strong” is not just a slogan for nonprofit leaders; it’s a finance and operations project. Regional Director Ellie Hume from Your Part-Time Controller walks through five concrete steps to wrap up the year with fewer surprises and more control. She starts with yearend giving appeals. Too many organizations accidentally lock donations into narrow buckets by sayin...

Send us Fan Mail Around the world, women and girls walk long distances every day to fetch water, losing education, income, and safety in the process. On this global episode of The Nonprofit Show , we welcome Shilpa Alva, founder and executive director of Surge for Water , beaming in late at night from Samarkand, Uzbekistan. From the first moments, Shilpa reframes water as a gendered economic issue...

Send us Fan Mail Donor retention is not just a feel good metric it is one of the most powerful levers in the business model of a nonprofit. We sit down with Kirsten Wantland, Principal Industry Strategist at Bloomerang, to explore how organizations can move beyond fear and confusion and actually use retention data to protect revenue and grow lifetime value. Kirsten begins by explaining her new rol...

Send us Fan Mail Labor myth buster Dana Scurlock, Director of Recruitment at Staffing Boutique, reframes temporary staffing as a sophisticated business tool for nonprofit leaders—not a last-resort move when things are on fire. Dana steps in to show how strategic temp and temp-to-perm staffing can stabilize teams, protect budgets, and protect sanity. She starts with a fundamental question: how many...

Send us Fan Mail In this thoughtful Fundraisers Friday conversation, cohosts Julia C. Patrick and Tony Beall take viewers inside one of the most persistent tensions in fundraising: the distinction between donor appeals and donor relationships. Using real experiences, honest stories, and decades of shared sector knowledge, they walk through why these two ideas are often treated as opposites—when in...

Send us Fan Mail A valuable and thought-provoking conversation with Carrie Wright, consultant and coach at Wright Consulting . Joined by cohosts Julia C. Patrick and Wendy F. Adams, Carrie guides leaders toward a more thoughtful, rigorous, and human-centered approach to nonprofit organizational performance. Rather than rushing into resolutions and planning cycles, Carrie urges leaders to adopt a p...

Send us Fan Mail Rethinking nonprofit success usually begins with new metrics or another training calendar. In this conversation, educator and learning strategist Nancy Bacon of Nancy Bacon Consulting proposes something far more disruptive: stop confusing information with action. Drawing on adult learning research and decades inside associations, state agencies, and community organizations, she ch...

Send us Fan Mail Nonprofits love to talk about growth. New markets, new programs, new grants, new everything. But our guest, Aila Malik , founder of Venture Leadership Collective , flips the script and asks the question most boards and executives skip: Have you actually earned the right to scale up? Coming out of Silicon Valley’s “grow or die” mindset, Aila warns that scaling is not a badge of hon...

Send us Fan Mail Interim leadership is no longer just a stopgap in the executive director’s seat—it’s becoming a strategic engine for sustainable fundraising.  Joan Brown , Chief Operating Officer at Interim Executives Academy , and David M. Nicole, CFRE , founder of Headwinds Consulting , share why interim development leadership may be one of the most underused tools in the nonprofit sector. Toge...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a kid who scribbles “play soccer at Ohio State” in kindergarten actually does it—and then decides his story shouldn’t be the exception? That question sits at the center of this episode with Channing Chasten, professional athlete and founder of The One Percent Kid Foundation. From the start, Channing describes a childhood shaped by two steady forces: the soccer pi...

Send us Fan Mail Year-end generosity is a perfect storm for cybercrime—and most nonprofits don’t see the danger until after the damage is done. We talk with Alex Brown, Director of Business Development at Richey May, about why the busiest time of your fundraising year is also one of the most hazardous for your systems, donors, and reputation. Alex explains how attackers watch for holiday chaos: st...