Denise Clark
Nonprofit Strategist, Consultant and Coach
Capacity Building Services
Just as a city’s physical infrastructure crumbles over in time if it is not maintained, so it is with nonprofit infrastructures. While the signs of erosion are rarely dramatic in one year, prolonged neglect will ultimately result in their total breakdown--and in the collapse of the programs they operate. Nonprofits are essential to the well-being of our citizenry; the need to strengthen their organizational capacity cannot be ignored.
Joyce Bove and Lawrence Mandell
“Strengthening New York City Nonprofit Organizations: A Blueprint for Action”
Strategy
Strategy is a coordinated set of actions designed to create and sustain competitive advantage in achieving a nonprofit’s mission.
To be in control of your nonprofit’s future, you must answer the question: How will we accomplish our mission? Mission has a pivotal place in strategic planning, the process that seeks the strategic fit between the mission of an organization and its internal strengths and external opportunities.
Strategic planning examines all aspects of the organization, develops a shared vision among stakeholders and maps out a course for the future. It holds an organization’s mind “open” longer than usual by giving board members and staff time to visualize, ponder and debate the future.
However, when strategic planning, is mentioned, it often conjures up a sense of dread and at best, a feeling of ambivalence. Based on our previous planning experiences, we envision boring meetings, personal agendas, domineering personalities, sabotaged processes, unresolved conflict, unrealistic goals and plans that are left sitting on the shelf.
To help us “fall back in love” with strategic planning, Denise has developed a creative approach to engage participants so they enjoy the process, create strategies (not just goals and objectives) and establish an organizational culture of ongoing strategic thinking and action.
Email Denise to learn how a strategic planning process could benefit your organization.
Capacity building and organizational effectiveness are popular terms these days, but what do they really mean?
-
•Capacity building involves “strengthening nonprofits so they can better achieve their missions.”
-
•Organizational effectiveness is evidenced by “an organization that is able to connect its vision to its goals, its goals to its plans, its plans to its actions.” It is a dynamic, fluctuating and fluid state, an ever-evolving mosaic of increasing self-awareness and internal development that keeps an organization moving steadily towards its vision. It is about an organization reaping results, not about management for its own sake.
As a nonprofit strategist, consultant and coach, Denise is committed to helping clients achieve organizational effectiveness by providing quality capacity building services. She helps nonprofit leaders strengthen their organizations to successfully fulfill their missions. Denise assists clients as they develop sound management practices, strong governance and a commitment to achieving results.
Denise’s services fall into four broad categories: Strategy, Training, Coaching and Governance. The following sections explore each of these areas.
Herb Kellher, Founder
Southwest Airlines
Coaching
Transform the way you live and lead!
People come to coaching because they are ready to make significant change. They may want to change jobs, downsize their lives, fulfill a secret dream, or slow down and spend more time and energy on what matters most to them. Some people want more from life—more peace of mind, more simplicity, more joy—and sometimes they want less—less stress, less confusion, less financial pressure.
A coach helps you learn how to master something whether it be reaching an important goal or making a difficult change. A client’s relationship with his or her coach is open and supportive, a partnership between two equals—unlike any other relationship we have in our lives.
You can use a coach to get your personal life together, set and achieve goals, start or expand a business, transition from one career to t
he next, improve your job performance and/or communicate better with everyone. There are literally hundreds of things you can use a coach to help you solve, master, achieve or develop.
When reminiscing about her career an executive director, Denise says, “I would have given anything to have had a coach during that time!” Recognizing a lack of coaching in the nonprofit sector, Denise became a coach with the intention of bringing life coaching to nonprofit leaders and has now been coaching in the sector for over four years. She trained with the Coaches Training Institute based in San Rafael, California, studying individual, relationship and organizational systems coaching.
Denise is an upbeat, enthusiastic coach dedicated to helping others maximize their untapped potential. With Denise as your coach you will:
-
• Get clear and focused on your goals and direction.
-
•Strategize your actions and create a plan so that you always know exactly what you need week in and week out to achieve your goals.
-
•Upgrade your skills so that you can carry out your plan with confidence and certainty. Having strong skills speeds up the process. You’ll find out what skills will help you the most and work with Denise to improve them.
-
•Optimize your environment so that there are less distractions and achieving your goals becomes effortless.
-
•Master your psychology to overcome any fears, doubts, limiting beliefs or insecurities that might be holding you back.
Email Denise to get more information on her coaching practice and to sign up for a free 30-minute coaching session. Denise wants everyone to experience coaching. Give it a try. It’s free with no strings attached!
Training
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
~ Mark Twain ~
Denise offers a variety of workshops on nonprofit management, fundraising, governance, coaching and self-care. All of Denise’s training topics can be customized to meet your organization’s needs. Workshops run one hour to a full day and can be provided for groups of any size.
Click on the star to learn about some of the workshops Denise offers.
Governance
With more than one million organizations receiving over $300 billion in charitable contributions in 2007, it is critical that nonprofit boards understand and practice good governance. In a nonprofit, governance authority is granted to the board of directors by the state to make decisions and set policies that define how the organization will carry out its mission.
Peter Drucker said, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Effective governance focuses on doing the right things, and it doesn’t just happen by accident. It takes the right people in the right place at the right time. It requires more than showing up at meetings. It requires that board members are motivated and engaged, curious and thoughtful, visionary and strategic.
Denise is an expert in good governance and is skilled at helping boards balance the need for long-term sustainability with the need to adopt effective structures and practices as the world continues to change. She is passionate about developing better boards, strengthening leadership skills and, most importantly, ensuring board members enjoy the capacity building process.
When consulting on exceptional governance, Denise’s clients experience great success in understanding and improving governance practices. Her areas of governance specialty include:
-
• Roles and responsibilities
-
• Recruitment and orientation
-
• Engagement and motivation
-
• Financial oversight
-
• Fundraising
-
• Strategic planning
-
• Team building retreats
-
• Board/staff relations
-
• Assessment and evaluation
Denise believes that serving on a nonprofit board should be a rewarding experience, providing board members with great enjoyment from the hard work they undertake. Contact Denise to explore what your organization can do to provide a meaningful and satisfying board experience for all board members.
