Does something feels off?
You have a mission statement. Maybe even a strategic plan. But genuine clarity about what problem you solve, for whom, and why you specifically are the ones to solve it, is harder to find.
That clarity is upstream of everything: fundraising, messaging, programs, hiring.
Clarity fuels innovation. It is not just a strategic outcome. It is the precondition for bold, confident action.
I work with executive directors and senior leaders at small to mid-size nonprofits and corporate foundations. Organizations with big missions and real complexity, navigating leadership transitions, expanded scope, strategic drift, or a significant inflection point.
They are ready to make intentional choices rather than letting circumstances decide for them.
💡 The Innovation Quotient: diagnostic assessment
Before your organization can experiment boldly, it needs to know what it’s building toward. The Innovation Quotient helps executive directors assess their organization’s strategic clarity, culture, and capacity for innovation, and surfaces what to work on first.
If you loved the stories and frameworks in Innovation for Social Change and want to go deeper, applying them to your specific organization with Leah’s guidance, the Innovation Quotient is where to start. It reveals the specific gaps in clarity, culture, and courage that keep talented organizations spinning their wheels.
The assessment guides you through exploring questions like:
- Is your nonprofit doing amazing work solving social problems, but underselling itself?
- Does your organization have genuine clarity about the problem it exists to solve?
- Are team members entrepreneurially alert to opportunities, surfacing ideas and challenging the status quo?
- Is your board encouraging experiments and intelligent risk-taking, or does caution dominate?
- Are devil’s advocates the loudest voices in the room, shooting down possibilities before they get a good hearing?
- And more.
The Innovation Quotient helps you ask hard questions so your board and donors don’t have to.
What’s included:
- Self-assessment questionnaire (~45 minutes)
- Debrief conversation with Leah
- Written summary with observations and recommendations
Interested? Let’s start with a conversation.
💡 Strategic Clarity Project
A 3 to 6 month collaborative engagement for organizations ready to make their biggest impact.
The goal isn’t a document. It’s genuine alignment on who you are, what you’re solving, and how you’re uniquely positioned to solve it. When that clarity is in place, donor conversations land differently. Board members find words for what makes the organization distinct. Staff stop waiting for permission.
Through 6 to 10 facilitated working sessions, we work through:
- Vision and mission refinement
- Scope definition and trade-offs
- Organizational differentiator
- Strategic priorities (12 to 24 months)
- Theory of change
- Audience definition
- Positioning in the landscape
- Stakeholder alignment
You walk away with a living strategic foundation, not a shelf document, and an organization that knows how to use it.
💡 Other Tailored Projects
Every organization is different. I also work on landscape analysis, program design, messaging clarity, theory of change development, partnership strategy, and facilitated leadership retreats. I offer ongoing advisory support at several levels of engagement, from a monthly strategic sounding board to deeper embedded advisory work. Bring your needs to a discovery conversation and I’ll share an honest assessment of whether and how I can help.
Based in the Washington, DC area, I serve clients nationwide.
Clients and Testimonials
