Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast

Two nonprofit leaders open the same tool on the same day. One of them hands it a pile of notes and gets back an SOP she can use, and a task that used to take two hours takes twenty minutes. The other corrects the draft, re-explains the context, tries another prompt, and quietly concludes the whole thing is more trouble than it's worth. The difference between them is almost never the prompt. In this episode, Brooke Richie-Babbage ma...

A board can be overreaching, newly energized, or quietly checked out — and on the surface those look like three different problems. One board won't stop approving things that belong to staff. Another has finally leaned in, except every bit of that engagement now routes through the executive director. A third is ready to think strategically but keeps sliding back into execution. Brooke Richie-Babbage argues these are one organ...

If a genie handed you $2 million or five new team members today, would it really solve your organization's biggest challenges—or reveal them? In this episode, I unpack a myth that keeps many nonprofit leaders stuck: that more money or people will automatically fix what's hard. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t. Instead, growth amplifies what’s already fragile. I share real-world examples from organizations that scale...

In this audio workshop, I pull back the curtain on the core elements that successful 7-figure nonprofits consistently point to as the reason they were able to grow to and sustain 7-figures - without burning out!

By the end of the workshop, you’ll know what it takes to scale and how to begin to integrate these elements into your own growth plans.

Want to work together?

Apply for the Next Level Nonprofit Mastermind, a hig...

In this episode, I dive into the essentials of creating a high-impact strategic plan for your nonprofit. Last week, we explored the importance of a well-structured planning process and clarity about your end goal. This week, we focus on the content of your strategic plan, ensuring it’s both inspiring and actionable. Whether you're leading the process or working with a facilitator, understanding these elements is crucial. ...

Most nonprofit executive directors lose their strategic thinking time every week for a reason that has nothing to do with discipline: it is the only block on the calendar with no one waiting on the other end of it. In this micro-episode, Brooke Richie-Babbage explains why strategy loses to everything else on a CEO's week — every competing commitment carries a consequence for missing it, and unstructured thinking time carries ...

Capacity is something you design. And when you feel strain, it's about that design, not about passion or ability.

In this conversation, I talk with two leaders who've redesigned their organizations to support the full weight of incredible org impact. Casey Lardner is the Executive Director of Genspace, the world's first community biology lab, Chidi Asoluka is the Founder and CEO of NewComm, which went from a classroom experiment wit...

"Once we stabilize the funding, we'll invest in systems." It sounds like responsible stewardship, and almost every leader running a $1M–$2M organization has said some version of it. But Brooke Richie-Babbage takes the belief apart, because she's watched it keep good organizations stuck in a loop that never resolves: the funding doesn't stabilize, and the missing infrastructure is one of the reasons it doesn't. This episode na...

You leave a leadership team meeting where everyone got their assignments and everyone nodded — and you still can't shake the sense that the real problem never got said out loud. That feeling isn't paranoia, and it isn't a sign your team is conflict-averse. 

In this episode, Brooke Richie-Babbage names a pattern she sees constantly in growing nonprofits: capable, mission-driven rooms shrinking a genuinely hard problem down...

There's a version of nonprofit leadership that gets sold as authenticity, luck, and the right personality in the chair — and it quietly lets leaders off the hook for the hard redesign work that real growth requires. In this episode, Brooke Richie-Babbage delivers a direct message to CEOs running $1.2M to $2.5M organizations: you've crossed enough thresholds to feel institutional complexity, but you haven't yet built the struc...

What This Episode Answers

Most growing nonprofits aren't underperforming because their funding is too concentrated — they're stalling because they've adopted a borrowed script about what a "healthy" nonprofit funding model is supposed to look like. In this episode, Brooke Richie-Babbage challenges the prescribed funding hierarchy and explains why the organizations that scale don't diversify in the traditional sense. They i...

Most organizations aren’t just shaped by strategy, org charts, or job descriptions — they’re shaped by the unwritten rules everyone follows but no one talks about. In this episode, I walk through what I call “unspoken agreements” — the invisible patterns that quietly determine how decisions get made, who holds power, and what problems never actually get solved.

I’ve seen how these agreements...

Growth should feel like momentum. For most nonprofit leaders between $1M and $3M, it feels like barely surviving — because the organization was built for a prior stage and never structurally redesigned for the current one. Brooke Richie-Babbage calls this the Design Deficit: the measurable gap between an organization's structural capacity and what its next stage of growth actually requires. In this episode, Brooke walks throu...

You’ve delegated. Probably more than once. So why does every decision still end up back on your desk?

In this episode, Brooke unpacks the real reason delegation so often fails inside growing organizations. The issue usually isn’t your team’s capability — and it’s not your willingness to hand things off. It’s that most organizations never build the structure that allows decisions to stay delegated ...

Funding concentration becomes risky when a nonprofit depends on a small number of major funders without the infrastructure to replace, supplement, or stabilize that revenue over time. At the $1M+ stage, the issue is not simply that a few funders represent a large share of the budget. The deeper issue is that the organization may be tracking revenue instead of building a true capital engine.

In this episode, Brooke explains why nonpr...

Most executive directors I talk to already know their board isn’t pulling its weight in fundraising. And yet, nothing really changes. In this episode, I unpack why that gap persists—and why it’s not a motivation or culture issue. It’s a design flaw. I walk through the moment every ED recognizes (when you realize you’re carrying the fundraising load alone) and explain why the usual fixes—trainings...

You know the meeting. It's on your calendar every week. Same time, same people — and you walk out wondering what you actually accomplished. In this episode, Brooke reframes why those meetings exist and what they're really telling you about the health of your organization.

Spoiler: the meeting isn't the problem. It's the symptom.

What You'll Hear in This Episode

• Why recurring, low-yield meetings are a design problem — n...

We’ve all heard it before: “Just shift to an abundance mindset.” But what if abundance isn’t just something you feel—it’s something you build? In this episode, I’m breaking down why so many nonprofit leaders stay stuck in scarcity and how to make abundance a practical part of your organizational strategy.

I’m sharing real examples of what it looks like to lead with generosity, create h...

In this episode, I talk about a pattern I see constantly among nonprofit leaders — and one I’ve caught myself falling into too. It sounds like: “After the gala.” “Once this transition is over.” “When things settle down.” The assumption behind those phrases is that calm will arrive first, and then we’ll finally have the space to build better systems.

But in reality, that calm rare...