Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership

Episode 388: Why Half of Your Week Isn't in Your Job Description (Cyril Jefferson)Episode SummaryMost 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 CyrilCyril 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.ResourcesThanks to our podcast partner, InperiumCyril's LinkedIn | City of High PointCommunities In Schools, the national dropout prevention network that served him as a studentStratagonBook recommendation: The Audacity of Hope by Barack ObamaConference 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 GivingEpisode SummaryMost 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 WilliamWilliam 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.ResourcesThanks to our podcast partner, InperiumWilliam's LinkedIn | Do Greater CharlotteRaj Chetty's economic mobility researchBook recommendations: Originals and Hidden Potential, both by Adam GrantConference 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 SummaryPlenty 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 DanDan 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.ResourcesThanks to our podcast partner, InperiumDan's LinkedIn | Atrium Health Floyd-Polk FoundationDogwood Health TrustBook recommendations: Upstream by Dan Heath, and The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff WoodsConference 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

Cecilia Haag, President of Thompson Impact Consulting and former strategy chief at a 140-year-old human services organization, explores what it takes to build nonprofits that last. She discusses scaling into new markets, integrating culture and operations, recognizing partnership red flags, tracking the numbers that matter, and developing leaders before opportunities arrive. A practical look at making mission and sustainability work together.

Episode 384: How to Launch a Planned Giving Program in One Week (Tony Martignetti)Episode SummarySmall 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 TonyTony 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.ResourcesThanks to our podcast partner, Inperium: inperium.orgTony’s new book, Planned Giving Accelerated, publishing September 15 wherever books are sold. Join the waitlist at plannedgivingaccelerated.comTony’s website, home to his Planned Giving Accelerator work and his podcast, Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio: tonymartignetti.comTony's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tonymartignettiBook 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.comYour Path to Nonprofit Leadership | ArmstrongMcGuire.com

383: What Nonprofit Leaders Get Wrong About Growing Fast (Steve Isom)Episode SummaryNonprofit 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 SteveSteve 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.ResourcesSteve’s LinkedInBloomerangBloomerang’s three AI principles: mission is the metric, the relationship stays human, your data stays yoursBonus: Steve’s LEGO fan account, @lego_doug_not_dad on InstagramBook recommendation: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (not a past guest)Join the Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy! www.institutepl.orgFollow 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 SummaryToo 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 AndrewAndrew 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.ResourcesAndrew's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lovedale-81b40833/Access to Success (A2S): https://a2sfoundation.orgA2S 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. donorsBook recommendation: When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian FikkertJoin the Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy!  www.institutepl.orgFollow 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 SummaryNonprofit 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 KarenKaren 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.ResourcesKaren's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/karen-riordan-72a88a2Together SC: TogetherSC.orgCheck out Together SC's “Nonprofits Get It Done” campaign (modeled on the National Council of Nonprofits) and their upcoming scenario-planning workshops for budget diversificationBook recommendation: Impact Networks by David EhrlichmanFollow Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership and please leave a review!Learn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire:  ArmstrongMcGuire.com

#380: Relationships Shape Everything: What Leaders Must Know to Build Community (David “Dae-Lee” Arrington)Episode SummaryMany 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-LeeDavid “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.”ResourcesDae-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-fragmentationBook recommendation: The Art of Gathering by Priya ParkerLearn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire

379: How to Treat Every Donor Like a Major Donor (Derric Bakker) Episode SummaryNonprofit 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 DerricDerric 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.ResourcesConnect with Derric Bakker on LinkedIn and learn more about DickersonBakkerDerric’s book: A Better Way to Fundraise: Treat Every Donor Like a Major Donor — explore the book and discussion guides at betterwaychampions.orgRecommended 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 institutepl.orgLearn more about Inperium, a nonprofit that helps health and human services organizations grow without sacrificing their mission: Inperium.orgLearn more about the leadership resources at Armstrong McGuire: ArmstrongMcGuire.com