What We Do
Advise and coach nonprofit organizations about leadership in complex adaptive systems. Our approach is long-term, to help your organization maintain sustainability for the struggle to resolve wicked social problems. We take a critical leadership approach because we know traditional leadership training does not go far enough for your concerns.
We take a holistic approach to leadership rather than isolating individual components.
Complexity and Complexity Leadership Theory inform our efforts. Complexity requires a learning organization, one in which all participants reflect, assess, and tweak based on those assessments to continually adapt organizational initiatives to best meet the needs at the time, given the constituents and resources accessible.
We Offer:
- Interim services
- Strategy assessments
- Development assessments
- Executive coaching
- Mentoring
- Advocacy planning
- Workshops
- Nonprofit lifestage assessments
- Board assessments/training
We offer these and more services online, in-person, or a hybrid of the two.
Coaching
We use a coaching approach ad defined by Wilson & Gislasson (2010): “a process that supports individuals to make more conscious decisions and to take new action. It helps them to identify and build on their strengths and internal resources and moves them forward from where they are to where they want or need to be.” (p. 1)
This coincides with the practice of Developmental Evaluation Coach, in which the evaluator (DE Coach) is part of a team whose members collaborate to conceptualize, design, and test new approaches in a long-term, ongoing process of continuous improvement, adaptation, and intentional change. The evaluator's primary function in the team is to elucidate team discussions with evaluative questions, data and logic, and to facilitate data-based assessments and decision-making in the unfolding and developmental processes of innovation. The collaborative evaluative judgements are ongoing and timely. DE involves evaluative thinking throughout an initiative's development and implementation, not solely formatively or summatively (PAttoon, 2008).
Coaching is typically more interventionist than advising, which is reserved primarily for organizations that have already instituted an effective learning organization process, and simply needs questions answered by an unbiased third party.
Speaking Engagements
We are available for speaking engagements to help organizations or conference attendees understand:
- Critical Leadership Studies
- Complexity Leadership Theory
- Developmental Evaluation
- Nonprofit civic responsibilities beyond service provision, such as fulfilling the triple bottom line or policy activism
Book an appointment ▸
Our People
Dr. Terry Fernsler
Principal
Terry Fernsler
Dr. Fernsler has more than thirty-five years of professional experience in the nonprofit sector, in a variety of organization types and a variety of roles. This depth and breadth of experience, coupled with his formal education, gives him a unique perspective of maneuvering nonprofit organizations through complex environments while being able to pay attention to detail.
As a development director, he learned and participated in all methods of fundraising from direct mail and door-to-door canvassing to crowdfunding and Twitter campaigns. He created planned giving programs for multiple small nonprofit organizations and built many successful fundraising events. It was during this work that he realized a good fund development officer must know about an organization in depth in order to respond effectively to prospective contributors’ questions or concerns. He also learned the importance of choosing words carefully in communication.
Terry is also willing to advocate for the nonprofit sector and disenfranchised communities. He initiated a bill that was to become the Washington State Community Reinvestment Act and, more recently, worked with the Washington State Legislature to create a bicameral, bipartisan nonprofit caucus to educate lawmakers about the issues of most concern to the state’s nonprofit organizations. He has also lobbied local governments to provide land to a Habitat for Humanity affiliate.
Indeed, Terry was instrumental in the establishment of that Habitat for Humanity affiliate, one of the most successful new rural affiliates in the United States, mobilizing the community to build three new homes a year within only three years of its creation. Terry is willing to take calculated risks and has a long history of cultivating collaborative initiatives. He coordinated the establishment of many new programs to benefit low-income families while an economic development district director in a high-poverty rural region. These programs involved a variety of nonprofit organizations and local government agencies, occasionally adding support from state and federal resource providers, and included:
- Capacity-building training for many small nonprofits
- Administration of listening sessions in eight small cities
- Connecting small communities with alternative wastewater treatment educators
- SenioRx low-cost medications for seniors
- A variety of transportation initiatives for low-income workers
- Ensuring the most cost-effective health care for a low-income immigrant community
- Small business development training for sole-proprietor start-up businesses
- Advice to eight nonprofit organizations in navigating the start-up process
- Fundraising training and board development non-credit courses to nonprofit organization participants throughout western Washington state
Terry minored in Nonprofit Leadership as an undergraduate student at Seattle University, then went on to earn a Master of Nonprofit Leadership degree at Seattle University in 2014 and a Ph. D. in Strategic Leadership Studies from James Madison University, with a concentration in Nonprofit and Community Leadership. His research interests include leadership in complex adaptive systems, rural philanthropy, nonprofit networks, and the capacity of small community foundations. While at James Madison University he was an instructor and the advisor in the Nonprofit Studies minor program. He also assisted in establishing the Office of Experiential Learning in the College of Business; there he explored mentoring programs, advised students of internships, and was key in the creation and establishment and first year of implementation of a residential learning community.
Rather than a consultant, Terry is an advisor to nonprofit organizations, enabling them to become learning organizations, continually assessing and adapting to changing circumstances. As an advisor he makes himself available to organizations on a long-term, as needed basis. He takes a systems approach to advising, and also encourages attention to details. A long-term commitment to nonprofits and his background in working with primarily small, often under-resourced organizations sets him apart from consultants with histories in more privileged organizations who come and go with little interest in the sustainability of their clients. sense.