Rethinking Nonprofit Success: Information Is Not Action!

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 challenges the sector’s default response to problems—more workshops, more webinars, more content.

Nancy names the uncomfortable truth: only about 10 percent of training translates into behavior change. That means roughly 90 percent of our investment in “capacity building” does not reliably alter what people actually do. For a sector that prides itself on stewardship, that is a profound governance and management issue, not merely a pedagogical one.

Instead, Nancy urges nonprofit leaders to move from a training mindset to a performance mindset. Rather than asking, “What session can we send them to?” she asks, “What would it take for our board members, staff, or volunteers to perform this task?” That question opens a richer design space: targeted knowledge, specific skills, practice in a safe environment, emotional connection, and practical support, such as job aids and clear task lists.

At the center of her framework is a deceptively simple sentence: “our nonprofits are only as strong as their people are.” Capacity is no longer an abstract concept; it becomes the ability, confidence, emotional readiness, and structural support that everyday people need in order to act.

Nancy also reframes motivation. Emotions may trigger interest, but sustained action depends on the partnership of competence and confidence, repeatedly reinforced through real practice. Her story of a board member whose service is rooted in the grief of losing a child makes this point vivid: when we slow down enough to know why people are at the table, we unlock a different level of commitment and trust.

For boards, fundraisers, and executives, this discussion is an invitation to pause the endless “rinse and repeat” of busywork and reconsider how learning, performance, and human psychology intersect.

 00:00:00 Today’s big question
 00:02:02 Meet Nancy Bacon educator designer and learning strategist
 00:03:33 Information is not action the ten percent reality of training
 00:06:31 From training to performance what board members really need
 00:12:48 Nonprofit capacity our organizations are only as strong as their people
 00:16:01 Competence confidence and the lost art of practice
 00:18:30 Motivation emotions and the gap between need to know and need to do
 00:21:47 Why are you really on this board the story that changed the room
 00:25:32 Nonprofits are in the people business brain and behavior science in action
 00:26:18 Under pressure can nonprofits still slow down to rethink success 

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