What We Do
Coaching, speaking and training for impactful nonprofits.
At Prosper Strategies, the majority of our work happens through strategic planning, marketing and fundraising strategy engagements where we work with entire organizations or departments for a sustained period of time. However, through this work, we’ve come to be known as thought leaders in the sector and are often asked to coach, speak to and train nonprofit leaders. Our approach to coaching, speaking and training, like all our work, is based on the Nonprofit Impact SystemTM method and Shared Power StrategyTM philosophy.
Coaching
Each year, Prosper co-founders, Lindsay Mullen and Alyssa Conrardy, and Prosper consultant, Jeff Vandeleest, who is also a former nonprofit executive director, take on a very limited number of nonprofit executive directors, CEOs, and marketing and fundraising leaders as one-on-one coaching clients. We meet for 90 minutes biweekly or monthly to work together through the biggest issues you’re facing – whether that’s driving the cultural change needed to encourage adoption of your strategic plan, securing funding for a new initiative, strengthening collaboration between your team and board, or something else entirely.
You may be a good fit for our style of coaching if you:
- Believe in the power of strategy and the Shared Power StrategyTM philosophy
- You want to commit to working with a coach for at least 6 months
- Want to set, and work hard to hit, specific goals for working with a coach
- Have a strategic plan, marketing plan or fundraising plan but are struggling to get it to take hold
- Are working to shepherd your organization or department through a period of transformation
- Are working to drive cultural change or improve collaboration between and across teams and boards
- Are interested in making progress that begins with YOU – the leader
- Are willing (and maybe even excited?!) to show up biweekly for coaching calls and do the work that we assign in between (typically about 1 hour of homework after each session)
Our minimum commitment for coaching clients is 6 months, and a package of 6 monthly sessions is $4,500. Reach out using the form below to inquire about available coaching slots, learn more about our approach to coaching, and discuss whether Lindsay, Alyssa or Jeff is the best coach for your goals.
Speaking
Prosper Strategies’ team of advisors is available for keynotes, large and small group talks and capacity-building workshops and trainings. We speak regularly at nonprofit conferences such as Upswell, Cause Camp, Classy Collaborative, and UNITE, as well as at universities with nonprofit programs or courses.
Topics Include:
- The Shared Power StrategyTM philosophy and shared power strategic planning
- The Nonprofit Impact SystemTM
- The role of communications in advancing race equity
- Strength-based communication
- The nonprofit marketing revolution
- Developing a mission, vision and values that stick
- Nonprofit brand development
- Marcomm and fundraising planning
- Nonprofit change management and culture change
- Nonprofit innovation
- Crisis communications
- COVID-19 recovery, communications and fundraising strategy
- …and more
Representation: Prosper Strategies is a women-owned, women-led company. We strive to speak in front of and among groups that share our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. If you’re interested in hiring us for a speaking engagement, expect us to ask you about the diversity of other panelists and speakers at your event. We prioritize events that bring in speakers from across a wide spectrum of gender identities, sexual orientations, abilities, and backgrounds, and encourage the organizations we are considering partnering with to ensure they are amplifying voices that are often underrepresented, especially BIPOC voices. We will gladly give up a speaking opportunity to someone else in cases where a wider range of voices need to be heard.
Fees: Prosper’s fees for speaking scale based on the nature of the event (virtual or in-person), size and makeup of the audience, level of customization needed and travel time required. We will provide rates upon request.
Use the form below to inquire about our availability for your speaking engagement.
Training
Prosper Strategies designs custom trainings for departments and organizations on topics ranging from strength-based communication to Shared Power StrategyTM. Trainings often accompany our strategic engagements, but can also be offered on a one-off or series basis for clients who are not engaged with Prosper in strategy work.
Examples of trainings we’ve offered recently include:
- We provided training sessions on strength-based communication to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America leadership team, board of directors and national conference attendees. We also developed a series of “train the trainer” sessions for trainers who would go into clubs nationwide and deliver a similar training to club leaders.
- We hosted a training session on strength-based communication for a diverse group of food banks at Feeding America’s national UNITE conference
- We trained a team of fundraisers at The Alford Group on inclusive communication and using fundraising to advance equity
- We trained the full team of staff at Comer Education Campus on adopting their new brand and marketing plan
- We trained the full team at Great Books Foundation on basic elements of strategic planning
- We spoke about the intersection of digital marketing and nonprofits at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s College of Advertising Symposium
Each training engagement is custom-designed, based on your goals. Use the form below to tell us more about what you’re looking for.