Inspired Nonprofit Leadership

Founders who build a nonprofit from the ground up often find that their identity and the organization have become the same thing. The founders who handle growth well learn to name what they are feeling when they hand off roles, and they choose a new role on purpose. Sarah invited Luke John Mickelson, who built one bunk bed in his garage in 2012 and grew it into Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nonprofit with more than 400 chapters across 47 states and four countries, to unpack what founder syndrome feels like from the inside and how founders and the people...

Founder syndrome usually gets talked about as a problem, and the founder often gets the blame. Sarah sees it differently: if your organization is outgrowing the person who started it, you probably did something right, and that transition deserves a real plan. Sarah goes solo to share how founders, boards, and the leaders who follow a founder can plan a healthier transition, drawing on her conversation with Luke John Mickelson, her years as a nonprofit executive director, and a sailing saying about easing the sails. In This Episode, You'll Learn Why Sarah thinks every successful...

When you expect yourself to get every word right, a small mistake can shake your confidence. Learning to stay comfortable when something goes wrong gives you room to keep communicating and connecting with the people in front of you. Sarah talks with Crispin Thompson, a leadership coach with more than 25 years of experience leading teams and helping people grow. They explore how to build confidence through practice, recover from mistakes, and use AI while taking responsibility for what you say. In This Episode, You'll Learn Why Crispin sees perfectionism as a barrier to confidence and...

When something hard happens in your life, the instinct is to keep working at full speed so nobody else has to carry your load. Leaders who handle these stretches well tell their team what's going on, lighten their workload for a while, and ask for help when they genuinely need it. Sarah goes solo to work through what to do when a long day, a loved one's illness, or a family crisis lowers what you can take on, drawing on three recent stories, including a day of early school drop-offs, a late doctor's appointment, and a promised...

Mental health support needs a place in the everyday work of a nonprofit. Regular check-ins and clear ways to get help give staff support they can turn to while doing demanding work. Sarah talks with Weanne Estrada, a mental health specialist at ADRA who supports people working in humanitarian settings. Together, they explore what nonprofit leaders can learn from supporting staff before, during, and after emergency deployments, including the everyday moments of connection that staff said mattered to them. In This Episode, You'll Learn Why Weanne sees mental health support as essential to...

Show Notes When you explain an idea to your team, the big picture may be clear in your head, but it's probably not as clear in your team's head as you think it is. Specific examples help other people understand what you mean and what the work actually involves. Sarah Olivieri walks through how to add useful detail to everyday communication so you can get what's in your head into the minds of your team. She shares practical examples from leadership meetings, planning, and the experiences of people your nonprofit serves. She shows how describing what happens...

Show Notes Reaching out to potential major donors can feel premature when you haven't figured out how you will follow up. A written contact list and a plan for the next interaction give you a simple place to start, without mapping out a year of conversations. Sarah shares this approach using questions from nonprofit leaders starting major gifts programs in the Inspired Philanthropy Circle. She shares her own struggle with following up, the scheduling habit that helps her stay connected, and ways to give people something to look forward to together. In This...

Episode Description Reaching out to potential major donors can feel premature when you haven't figured out how you will follow up. A written contact list and a plan for the next interaction give you a simple place to start, without mapping out a year of conversations. Sarah walks through this approach using questions from nonprofit leaders starting major gifts programs in the Inspired Philanthropy Circle. She shares her own struggle with following up, the scheduling habit that helps her stay connected, and ways to give people something to look forward to together. In...

A fundraising story asks people to care and act. How you gather and share that story matters to the person who lived it, the audience hearing it, and the donor relationships you hope to build. Sarah invited Maria A Bryan, a trauma-informed storytelling trainer who helps nonprofits tell difficult stories while protecting the people involved, to unpack how consent, safety, and choice belong in fundraising. They discuss asking for stories without pressure, preparing audiences for difficult content, and building donor relationships around shared impact rather than guilt. Who it's for You want to share...

Show Notes Arriving at a team meeting with a solution already worked out can feel like you're helping everyone get ahead. When the work needs several people's perspectives, leaving the solution open gives the team a chance to develop something together that none of them could have created alone. Sarah discusses when preparing a solution before a meeting can get in the way of collaboration, drawing on her experience helping teams create something new together. In This Episode, You'll Learn What to consider before working out a solution ahead of a...

Show Notes Arriving at a team meeting with a solution already worked out can feel like you're helping everyone get ahead. When the work needs several people's perspectives, leaving the solution open gives the team a chance to develop something together that none of them could have created alone. Sarah discusses when preparing a solution before a meeting can get in the way of collaboration, drawing on her experience helping teams create something new together. In This Episode, You'll Learn What to consider before working out a solution ahead of a...

Episode Description Trust can be measured. It grows through honest communication and fair treatment, and it can break when leaders mishandle change. Sarah invited Kim Bohr, President and CEO of SparkEffect, whose annual research tracks organizational trust across the US, to discuss what builds trust, what breaks it, and how leaders can protect it through disruption. In This Episode, You'll Learn Why 85 percent of people faced major disruption in two years What Kim's research says builds trust Why hard conversations should get to the point ...

Show Notes Planned giving often lands on the someday list right beside the wealth screen a nonprofit can't yet afford. Tony Martignetti says you can launch it this week with one honest conversation about a gift in a will. No campaign, no brochure, no page. Sarah sat with Tony Martignetti, a front-line planned giving fundraiser since 1997 and author of the new book Planned Giving Accelerated, to discuss how a small or mid-size nonprofit launches planned giving in a single week, without a wealth screen or a legal background. In This Episode, You'll Learn How Tony's...

Episode Description Many nonprofit leaders treat strategy, operations, and team as three separate pillars in their organization, but in fact, they are part of one integrated system. In this episode, Sarah goes into strategy, operations, and team as the who, what, where, when, and how of running a great nonprofit. She shares how these are built into her Impact Method®, which she developed back in 2017. In This Episode, You'll Learn Why strategy, operations, and the team have to work as one system

Episode Description Many nonprofit leaders treat turnover as a problem to solve after someone resigns. The organizations that handle it well plan for it before the hire, in how the job itself is designed. Sarah invited Steve Cadigan, LinkedIn's first Chief Human Resources Officer and the person who grew the company from 400 people to 4,000 while the median tenure on his own staff was nine months, to talk about how to build an organization that works when people come and go, and how to stay connected to the good ones after they leave. In...

Episode Description Many nonprofit leaders pick a marketing tactic first- a gala, a Facebook fundraiser, a social media takeover, and then hope it works. The organizations that get a real return pick the goal first and let the goal decide the tactic. Sarah goes solo to work through how to build a marketing strategy simple enough to fit on one page, drawing on the years she spent running a marketing agency for nonprofits. In This Episode, You'll Learn Executive directors about to spend money on a tactic a board member suggested<...

Show Notes: Most nonprofit leaders treat retention as a problem to fix after the hire. The organizations that keep people for decades treat it as something they build into the hire itself. Sarah invited Crystal FitzSimons, the president of the Food Research and Action Center and someone who has been at FRAC for twenty-four years leading a team where staff routinely stay ten, twenty, and even forty years, to unpack what actually holds people in a nonprofit for the long term. This episode is for: Executive directors and nonprofit CEOs...

Let Them Go Well with Sarah Olivieri The thought shows up quietly and then keeps coming back. Maybe this person is not right for us. Then it sits there for months while you look for more evidence and rehearse a conversation you never have. Meanwhile the person you are worried about is stuck in a job that is grinding on them too. In this solo episode, Sarah walks through how to know when it is time to let someone go, and how to do it in a way that leaves everyone intact. In This Episode, You'll...

Show Notes Most nonprofit leaders already know they can't make every decision themselves. They've said it out loud in meetings and retreats. They want more decisions happening close to the work. Then a year later, they're still the bottleneck. Sarah sat down with Jocelyn Wyatt, CEO of Alight and co-founder of ideo.org, to unpack why distributed leadership stalls inside organizations that say they want it, and what it actually takes to make it real across a global team of over two thousand humanitarians. Here's what you'll hear: How...

Lunch Is Leadership with Sarah Olivieri Lunch is the first thing to go. The calendar fills up, something has to give, and the hour in the middle of the day is the one that looks optional. Skip it enough times and you start making your biggest decisions of the week on an empty tank. In this solo episode, Sarah breaks down why lunch is a leadership decision, and exactly how to get it back on your calendar and keep it there. In This Episode, You'll Learn Why your blood sugar spikes...