Boardroom Basics:

What you need to know to run your NGO 

The Context

Many people who start their careers at nonprofits arrive with passion, but with little formal management training. They often don't know how a senior leadership team is supposed to function; what a CFO, COO, CHRO, or CEO actually does day-to-day; or how those roles relate to and interact with one another. On top of that, they often don’t have anyone to ask, or any benchmark for comparison, since many nonprofits are too small or too siloed to model these structures clearly.

The Challenge

How do you teach busy, mission-driven people the fundamentals of nonprofit management – not through lectures, but in a memorable way that actually sticks?

Our Process

We designed and ran an immersive, four-day "executive simulator." Rather than teaching theory from the front of a room, we constructed an entire fictional nonprofit: TeddyStuff, a teddy-bear-recycling charity for children in need. Our workshop participants ran TeddyStuff for the week. They stepped into our NGO’s C-suite roles, and stayed in character for the duration, working around the boardroom table to draft budgets, work plans, HR policies, donor strategies, and a complete vision, mission, and values framework. We facilitated in character too, dressing the part, sending letters from fictional donors, and convening an emergency board meeting to throw some realistic curveballs into the simulation. Each day built toward the next, culminating in a full executive presentation delivered to a panel posing as a major foundation's review committee. 

The Result

By living the role instead of studying it, participants absorbed in days what might otherwise take years of on-the-job trial and error to learn. The format turned dry organizational concepts, such as budgeting, stakeholder management, and risk mitigation, into vivid, memorable experiences tied to a fictional company they'd come to feel real ownership over. Energy and satisfaction were high throughout, and the group's closing "We did it!!" moment captured their sense of accomplishment: real organizational understanding and practical management skills, built through simulation and play, that participants could carry directly back into their real-life roles.