From the field

What I'm Reading

A running record of the outside work shaping how I think about nonprofit strategy. I add to it as I read.

Consultancy report

La Piana Consulting · 2024

Convergence: Nonprofit Mergers and the Strategic Case for Coming Together

The clearest framing I have found for treating partnership as a strategy choice rather than a rescue. I return to their restructuring continuum in almost every coalition conversation.

Read at source
Consultancy report

Engage R+D · 2023

Equitable Evaluation in Practice

Useful pressure on how we decide what counts as evidence. It reshaped how I build measurement into planning workbooks.

Read at source
Foundation research

Vermont Community Foundation · 2025

The State of Vermont's Nonprofit Sector

The baseline data I reach for when a board wants to know how their organization sits against the sector. Grounds a lot of my early-engagement conversations.

Read at source
Foundation research

The Bridgespan Group · 2023

Rooted in Resilience: A Framework for Organizational Health

Complements the strategic metabolism framework well. Their capacity model gives boards a shared vocabulary for what stability actually requires.

Read at source
Strategic plan

Vermont Foodbank · 2024

Strategic Plan, 2024 to 2028

A model of a plan that reads as a real instrument rather than a brochure. I point clients to it when they doubt a plan can be both rigorous and legible.

Read at source
Academic

Chait, Ryan, and Taylor · 2005

Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards

The foundation under most of my board development work. The generative mode is the part boards most often skip and most need.

Read at source
Essay

Stanford Social Innovation Review · 2022

The Overhead Myth and What Replaced It

Worth rereading whenever a funder conversation drifts toward ratios. A clean argument for judging organizations on capacity, not cost.

Read at source