Non-profit Coaching and Philanthropy Partnership - Always on the lookout for new organizations in which to sow a coaching culture, we realized a few years ago, that we'd overlooked the neediest: the non-profits. Here were organizations whose very survival depended on their leader's ability to manage operations, launch initiatives, and raise funds—and yet, with scant resources at their disposal, rarely invested in leadership development. Here were executive directors caught between the grindstones of volunteer boards and underpaid staff, who sorely needed a sounding board to help them arrive at more creative solutions. Where were we?

Today, happily, we're right by their side. With the support of three committed partners—Compass Point, BTW Informing Change, and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations—and a generous grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, we're connecting Executive Directors in nonprofits, healthcare, education, women and girls' programs, and the arts with the coaching community. The first phase of our three-year initiative is one of education. By attending non-profit conferences and retreats and offering on-the-spot coaching, for example, we hope to help these leaders better appreciate the powerful role a coach can play. At the same time, we're working with our peers to make them aware of how pro bono work enhances their consultancy. In short, we're figuring out how to make coaching both highly relevant and utterly sustainable in organizations where funding is perennially in short supply.

Phase Two of our philanthropy partnership is all about implementation: coaching leaders, and training leaders to be coaches. We're especially excited to train those non-profit consultants who are well connected in communities where we're not yet culturally aware, so that they can come back to us with ideas on how we can better serve those communities. And we're thrilled to expand on the work we've been doing with our pilot programs, extending one-on-one coaching to executive directors who've been teetering on the brink of burnout.

As with all the coaching we do, we find that in giving freely, we receive abundantly. There is nothing quite so transformative, for us, as helping a highly capable leader access the energy, skills, and vision to rally the organization into fulfilling its mandate. Our clients in the nonprofit sector value our support, work hard at the challenges, and positively thrive on the accountability we provide—probably because they are themselves motivated by values of social justice and contribution.

We have so much, it turns out, to give each other. In terms of igniting personal, professional, and organizational growth, integrating coaching into the social sector fulfills our mandate.