Sara Jane Lowry

Coaching and Consultation

Nonprofit Consulting

Services that Strengthen Nonprofits

As a skilled and experienced nonprofit consultant, I guide nonprofits toward success. After going through some assessment, we then build on your organization’s strengths. The goal is to help you to be more effective, financially stable, and more strategic in understanding and meeting community needs. Working together with executive leadership, staff, and board means understanding where you are now, and understanding the organization’s capacity for risk and change. We then explore opportunities for growth and address the challenges you face while crafting strategies to help you achieve your mission.

ApproachPicture of gears with words Internal Capacity

As a whole-systems practitioner, I recognize that presenting issues are, at their root, complex and arise out of challenges at more than one organizational level. Organizational development is the process through which your organization develops the internal capacity to be the most effective it can be in its mission work, and to sustain itself over the long term.  My goal is to see the causes of issues you face, rather than focusing primarily on symptoms. Your very survival depends on seeing past the symptoms:

  • from basic systems to handling critical transitions;
  • to your functioning as the best provider of services for the populations you serve,
  • to your ability to fundraise successfully and engage the community as a whole.

Developing your organization sometimes takes longer than you think it will and can be messy! It is a never-ending process and people need systems and support to sustain change.

What I Offer

  • Organizational Assessment: identifying what is working well, any barriers to effectiveness, and strategies for transforming.
  • Strategic Thinking and Planning: needs assessments, planning, and measurements on achieving your organizational goals.
  • Leadership Coaching: Enhancing the effectiveness of your executive director, board chair, or leadership teams through improved communications and decision making.
  • Resource Development: Development planning of income from multiple sources, capital projects and campaigns, donor stewardship, and assessment and training of fundraising staff.
  • Executive Transition: Leverage the opportunities presented by a change in leadership and succession planning.

I serve the nonprofit community with consulting and training services, including:

• Community-based fundraising
• Major gifts
• Earned income and nonprofit business planning
• Board development and board fundraising
• Succession planning
• Nonprofit mergers and strategic alliances
• Meeting and retreat facilitation
• Train the trainer programs
• Individual coaching
• Troubleshooting

How can I help you?

How to hold people accountable

“How to hold my people accountable?” is a question I hear from coaching clients. Their frustration level is usually high, and they are at their wit’s end. They’ve tried pleading with the staff, anger, telling the people they manage what and how to do their job, and in the end, everyone is miserable. So if […]

Under Stress?

It feels like you are stuck in the same cycle of behavior or situations when you are under stress. Do you find yourself with the same negative emotions, challenges, and issues, unable to take the steps you need to change or move on? We’re all capable of making the same mistakes over and over, because, […]

Achieve your goals daily with these 3 things.

Are you achieving your goals every day? If not, then read on. The next 3 minutes will set your mind to creating a new day for yourself. If you are truly ready to attain your goals faster, by doing more in less time, then you need to plan your day and track your goals. Maybe you think you […]

Overcoming Overwhelm

You are here because you’re feeling overwhelmed, or burned out. What is the first solution everyone tells us: “time management.” Time Management or “overcoming overwhelm” is really about knowing your priorities. So, you’re feeling overwhelmed. Perhaps you think you have too many priorities. For instance, when was the last time you tracked how you are […]

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