01
Built for your context
Sessions use your organization's real situations, not generic case studies from another sector.
Service Engagement
Build Capability
That Stays in the Room.
Consulting solves a problem. Training builds the capability to solve the next one. CAMPBELL delivers interactive virtual workshops for boards, staff, and leadership teams on strategic planning, trauma-informed care, artificial intelligence, board governance, project management, and performance measurement.
The Basics
The Core Concepts.
A workshop is not a presentation. It is structured practice, built around the decisions the participants will actually have to make.
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Practice, not lecture
Participants work through the material and leave having applied it at least once.
03
The right people in the room
Board governance, staff execution, and executive strategy are different sessions with different designs.
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Tools that outlast the session
Templates, frameworks, and job aids that participants keep using after the workshop ends.
Our Workshops
What We Teach.
Six workshops, delivered virtually and built around your organization’s own situations. Single sessions run as one working block; series run as multiple sessions so teams can apply the material between them.
Series
Strategic Planning Series
Four 90-minute sessions, one a week, taking a team from clarifying purpose through assessing conditions and choosing priorities, to an implementation plan and scorecard. Two optional sessions address the moments before and after, where plans most often fail.
Who it is forExecutive directors, founders, board members, and program leaders
See the full series →Series
Performance Measurement Series
Four 90-minute working sessions, one a week, building a measurement system a small team can sustain: an indicator set you chose, definitions two people would count the same way, a view leaders will open, and a review where the numbers change a decision.
Who it is forExecutive directors, program and data staff, finance leads, and boards
See the full series →Series
Grant Readiness Series
Four 60-minute working sessions, one a week, taking a team from whether it is fundable at all, through choosing what to chase and writing what reviewers score, to managing the award once it lands. Teams work on their own documents throughout.
Who it is forExecutive directors, development, finance, and program leads
See the full series →Series
Trauma-Informed Care Series
Three 90-minute sessions, one a week, moving a team from understanding trauma and how it shows up, through the six trauma-informed principles in daily practice, to de-escalation skills, staff safety, and the systems that make the whole thing hold.
Who it is forDirect-service staff, supervisors, and leadership
See the full series →Single Session
Artificial Intelligence in the Nonprofit Space
A practical look at where these tools genuinely help a nonprofit and where they do not. Staff test real tasks against what the tools can actually do, draw the lines around client information, and leave with a one-page acceptable use position a board can adopt.
Who it is forBoards, executives, and program staff
See the full session →Single Session
Board of Directors Service 101
Ninety interactive minutes on the three questions every board member should be able to answer: what is my role, what am I responsible for, and why am I here. Includes a board skills gap analysis, so the board leaves knowing what it is missing and what to recruit for next.
Who it is forNew and serving board members, chairs, and the executives who work with them
See the full session →Single Session
Project Management for NPOs 101
The discipline that turns an approved idea into finished work, scaled for nonprofit teams and requiring no new software. The team breaks down a real initiative of its own and leaves with a one-page charter and a check-in cadence it has agreed to.
Who it is forProgram managers, operations staff, and anyone running initiatives
See the full session →Course · 3 Parts
Performance Measurement 101
A plain-language introduction for people who have never been taught the words. The first hour is entirely vocabulary: input, output, outcome, indicator, baseline. No prior knowledge, no software, and no framework assumed.
Who it is forAnyone who has nodded along to the word outcomes and hoped nobody asked
See the full course →Tailored to Your Organization
Every workshop is adapted before it is delivered. Session length, depth, and examples are shaped around who is in the room and what they need to be able to do afterward, and any of these can be combined into a recurring board and staff curriculum. If the capability you need built is not listed here, it is still worth the conversation.
Featured Series
Strategic Planning: From Mission to Measurable Impact.
Most strategic plans do not fail in the writing. They fail in the deciding. Organizations arrive at planning with a mission everyone can recite, a board that approves the document, and no shared method for choosing between good options. A year later the plan sits unopened, and each new opportunity is argued from scratch. This series is built to change that.
01Foundation
Establish the Foundation
What must we clarify before we begin planning?
- Strategic planning and its connection to everyday management
- Planning readiness, leadership sponsorship, and decision-making roles
- Organizational mandates: what the organization is required or expected to do
- Mission, values, and the community benefit the organization exists to create
- Stakeholder identification and meaningful participation
Working takeawayPlanning charter and initial stakeholder map
02Evidence
Understand Your Organization
What is happening inside and around us, and what requires a strategic response?
- Internal assessment: programs, finances, staffing, governance, systems, and capacity
- External assessment: community needs, funding conditions, policy changes, and partnerships
- Using stakeholder feedback and organizational data
- Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
- Distinguishing strategic issues from routine operational concerns
Working takeawayPreliminary SWOT and two or three draft strategic issue statements
03Direction
Set Your Direction
What will we focus on, and how will we choose our approach?
- Developing alternative responses to strategic issues
- Evaluating mission alignment, impact, feasibility, cost, and risk
- Selecting a manageable set of priorities
- Distinguishing priorities, goals, strategies, and activities
- Building agreement and preparing for formal plan review and adoption
Working takeawayDraft priority framework, one developed goal and strategy, and an approval pathway
04Execution
Put the Plan to Work
How will we organize the work and know whether we are making progress?
- Translating strategies into work plans and milestones
- Assigning ownership and connecting priorities to the budget
- Establishing measurable objectives and performance indicators
- Distinguishing activities, outputs, and outcomes
- Reviewing results and adapting strategies as conditions change
Working takeawayInitial 90-day action plan, draft performance scorecard, and review schedule
Two optional sessions.
The core series builds a plan. These address the two moments where plans most often fail: before, when an organization already has one that is not working, and after, when a new plan is finished and everyone moves on. Either can be taken with the series or on its own.
Before you begin · Free · 45 minutes
Your Strategic Plan Shouldn’t Sit on a Shelf
For organizations that already have a plan that was written carefully, approved by the board, and has not informed a decision since. Diagnoses why, and hands leaders two tools they can use on the plan they already have: the Decision Criteria Matrix, and the “So what?” test run against their own SWOT.
After the plan · 90 minutes · 60 to 90 days after Part 4
Keeping the Plan in Use
The risk is highest right after adoption, when the document is finished and the planning energy is spent. Deliberately scheduled once reality has tested the plan, to turn it from a document into a working decision system.
The participant workbook
The templates are the spine of the series. Each session fills one in, and by the final session they assemble into a working planning foundation.
- Planning charter
- Stakeholder map
- Assessment worksheet
- Strategic issue worksheet
- Prioritization matrix
- Implementation plan
- Performance scorecard
What participants finish with
A working strategic planning foundation, draft priorities, and an initial implementation roadmap.
Completing and adopting a full organizational strategic plan will require additional stakeholder input and leadership decisions beyond these workshops. We say this plainly at the outset so the expectations set with boards and funders are accurate.
Our strategic planning engagements →Full Series Outline
Every session, its topics, what participants will be able to do, and the 90-minute agenda, in a single document you can share with your team, board, or funder.
Featured Series
Performance Measurement.
Volume is what the system already captures, so volume is what gets reported. People served, sessions delivered, meals distributed. All true, and none of it answers the question a funder is actually asking. This series builds the other thing across four sessions: an indicator set the team chose, definitions two people would count the same way, a view leaders will actually open, and a standing meeting where the numbers change a decision.
01Definition · 90 min
What Are We Actually Claiming?
What change do we say we create, and for whom?
- Outputs, outcomes, and the gap most nonprofit reports never close
- Working backwards from the change you claim to the measures that would show it
- Choosing few enough indicators that a small team can still produce them in a year
- Cutting the list out loud, and recording what you decided not to measure
- Tying the set to the strategic priorities it is supposed to serve
You leave withA drafted indicator set for one program, already cut to what you can sustain
Read first: Outputs vs. Outcomes
02Foundation · 90 min
Definitions, Baselines, and Who Collects
Would two people in this organization produce the same number?
- Writing a definition precise enough that two people count the same way
- Finding a baseline in data you already hold, and what to do when there is none
- Naming an owner and an instrument for every measure, without exception
- Collection that survives a busy quarter, using the tools you already have
- Consent, confidentiality, and protecting the information you are now gathering
You leave withOne measure defined end to end: definition, baseline, owner, instrument
Read first: Data Tracking 101 for Small Nonprofits
03Visibility · 90 min
Building the View Leaders Open
What does a leader need to see, and what should they do about it?
- Designing backwards from the decision rather than forwards from the data
- Targets, thresholds, and agreeing in advance what counts as off track
- What a dashboard must never become: a data dump, vanity metrics, a reporting burden
- One page for the board and a working view for the team, and why they differ
- Keeping it alive after handoff, with a named owner and a refresh anyone can run
You leave withA one-page board view and a working team view, both drafted
04Use · 90 min
The Review That Changes a Decision
What happens in the meeting where these numbers get looked at?
- The review agenda that turns a dashboard into a decision rather than a presentation
- Reading variance: what to ask when a number moves, and when not to react at all
- Deciding in the room, assigning the follow-up, and closing it at the next review
- Reporting honestly to funders and boards, including what did not work
- The annual rhythm: when to revisit the measures themselves rather than the results
You leave withA review agenda, a date in the calendar, and an owner against every measure
Read first: From Strategic Plan to Action
How each session runs.
The same shape every week, so teams know what to bring. Instruction is kept short because the value is in the forty minutes where a team builds that week's artifact from its own program.
First 10 minutes
Where this organization stands
Each team reports what changed since last week. Short and specific, and the reason the work happens between sessions rather than only inside them.
Next 30 minutes
The material
The concepts for that week in plain language, with examples drawn from real nonprofit reporting. Nothing theoretical that does not change what a team does on Monday.
Next 40 minutes
Building your own
The part that makes it a working session. Teams apply the material to their own program and produce that week's artifact, with the facilitator moving between them.
Last 10 minutes
What is due next week
One concrete piece of work, sized to a busy week, named out loud so the group holds each other to it.
The participant toolkit
Every template is provided in editable form, so the remaining programs can be worked through after the series ends.
- An indicator selection worksheet
- The measure definition sheet
- A baseline worksheet for data you already hold
- A one-page board view template
- The quarterly review agenda
- A measure owner register
What you finish with
An indicator set for one program that the team chose and can sustain, every measure defined with a baseline, an owner and an instrument, a one-page view for the board alongside a working view for the team, and a standing review with a date and a chair. Templates are provided in editable form, so the remaining programs can be worked through without us.
Our performance measurement engagements →Full Series Outline
Every session, what it covers, what to bring, what you leave with, and how each session is structured, in a single document you can share with your team or board.
Featured Series
Grant Readiness.
Most declined proposals are not rejected because the program was weak. They are rejected because the organization could not document, on deadline, what it was already doing well. Grant readiness is the work done before an opportunity is posted, and this series builds it in four hours across four weeks. Teams bring their own documents and finish each week with one piece of the foundation actually done.
01Foundation · 60 min
Are We Fundable Yet?
What has to exist before an opportunity is worth answering?
- Governance and organizational documents a funder will ask for, and which are missing
- Describing a program precisely enough that two staff members describe it the same way
- Outcome data you can actually produce, as opposed to outcomes you can assert
- A budget that holds up to scrutiny, built on what the program really costs
- The readiness audit, scored honestly, with the gaps ranked by what they block
You leave withA completed readiness audit and a ranked list of what to fix first
Read first: Are You Grant-Ready?
02Selection · 60 min
Choosing What to Chase
Which opportunities deserve the sixty to a hundred hours applying will cost?
- What a competitive application actually consumes in staff time, counted honestly
- Five questions that settle fit in twenty minutes, before anyone opens a document
- Conditions that change the value of an identical award: match, indirect, reporting load
- Mission drift, and how a plan specific enough to decline things protects against it
- Building a pipeline so opportunities are met a year out rather than three weeks out
You leave withA go or no-go decision on a real opportunity, and a written rule for the next one
Read first: Should You Apply for This Grant?
03Persuasion · 60 min
Writing What Reviewers Score
How is this read, by whom, and against what?
- How reviewers actually work: the scoring rubric, the time per proposal, the fatigue
- Need, response, and evidence, and why most narratives argue the first and skip the third
- Making the logic visible so a reader does not have to assemble it themselves
- The budget narrative as an argument rather than an explanation of arithmetic
- Common failures: unsupported outcomes, vague capacity claims, answering a different question
You leave withOne program narrative rewritten against a rubric, with the evidence named
04Stewardship · 60 min
Managing What You Win
What starts on the day the award arrives?
- Reading the award rather than the proposal, because the terms are frequently not the same
- The reporting calendar as the real schedule, with an owner against every date
- Allowable, allocable, and reasonable, in plain language and with the records to match
- The documentation file you will wish you had kept, built as you go
- Planning the ending from month seven, and what evidence makes the renewal case
You leave withA reporting calendar and a first-week checklist for the next award
Read first: What Happens After You Win the Grant
How each hour runs.
The same shape every week, so teams know what to bring and what will be asked of them. Instruction is kept short, because the value is in the twenty-five minutes where a team works on the thing it actually has to produce.
First 10 minutes
Where this organization stands
Each team reports what changed since the last session. Short, specific, and the reason the work gets done between sessions rather than in the session.
Next 20 minutes
The material
The concepts for that week, in plain language and with examples from real nonprofit proposals. No theory that does not change what a team does on Monday.
Next 25 minutes
Working on your own documents
The part that makes it a working session. Teams apply the material to what they brought, with the facilitator moving between them.
Last 5 minutes
What is due next week
One concrete piece of homework, sized to fit a busy week, and named out loud so the group holds each other to it.
The participant toolkit
Every template is provided in editable form, so the work continues after the series ends and the next proposal starts from something rather than nothing.
- The grant readiness audit, scored and rescored
- A program description worksheet
- A full-cost budget template
- The go or no-go decision sheet
- A reviewer's rubric to self-score a narrative
- A post-award reporting calendar
What you finish with
A scored readiness audit with ranked gaps, one program described precisely enough to survive review, a full-cost budget for that program, a written rule for which opportunities the organization will pursue, one narrative rewritten against a rubric, and a reporting calendar ready for the next award. Every template is provided in editable form so the work continues after the series ends.
Our grants engagements →Full Series Outline
Every session, what it covers, what to bring, what you leave with, and how each hour is structured, in a single document you can share with your team or board.
Featured Series
Trauma-Informed Care.
The shift from “what is wrong with you?” to “what might be happening to you?” is the foundation of trauma-informed care. Trauma is common among the people nonprofits serve, and it shapes behavior, engagement, and trust even when it is never disclosed. Many challenges in community programs are trauma-driven rather than motivation-driven.
01Foundation
Understanding Trauma and Its Impact
Building a shared language and foundation.
- What trauma is, and what it is not
- Five forms of trauma: individual, developmental, community, systemic and historical, and vicarious
- Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn as survival responses
- The brain under stress, and why reasoning fails in the moment
- Why clients disengage: fear, shame, mistrust, and loss of control
Key takeawayBehavior in high-stress moments is driven by the nervous system, not intent.
02Knowledge to Practice
The Six Trauma-Informed Care Principles in Action
Converting knowledge into everyday practice.
- SAMHSA’s four R’s: realize, recognize, respond, resist re-traumatization
- Why trauma-informed care must be organizational rather than dependent on individual staff
- The six principles: safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; empowerment, voice and choice; and cultural, historical and gender issues
- How the principles show up across policies, programs, physical spaces, communication, decision-making, and client pathways
Key takeawayWhen trauma-informed care is built into systems, the organization itself becomes a source of safety.
03Tools & Sustainability
Trauma-Informed Skills, De-Escalation and Organizational Integration
Practical tools, staff safety, and the systems that make it last.
- The connection between trauma and escalation, and the early warning signs
- Nine de-escalation techniques, from nervous system matching to exiting with dignity
- The Staff Safety Triangle: clarity, permission, and backup
- Post-incident support, secondary traumatic stress, and burnout
- Long-term systems: governance, hiring, training, incident protocols, wellness, language standards, data, equity, and leadership accountability
Key takeawayIf staff safety depends on individuals being good at de-escalation, the system has failed. Lasting trauma-informed care is a leadership and policy commitment.
Who it is for
- Frontline and direct-service staff
- Program managers and supervisors
- Executive leaders and board members shaping policy and culture
How sessions are delivered
- Real-world scenarios and case studies drawn from your community
- Group discussion, chat shares, and open mic
- Guided self-reflection on bias and practice
- Practical tools your team keeps and puts to use
The Audit
Trauma-Informed Organizational Audit
Thirty questions that ask whether the practice is built into how you run, or is being carried by particular people. The scale is deliberately a maturity scale: an item marked informal is a finding, because that practice leaves the day the person carrying it does. Complete it as a group, with direct-service staff in the room.
Full Series Outline
Every session, its learning objectives, what it covers, and how participants engage, in a single document you can share with your team or board.
Featured Session
Artificial Intelligence in the Nonprofit Space.
Nonprofits hold some of the most sensitive information anyone holds: client records, immigration status, health and safety details, the circumstances that brought a family through the door. Staff under time pressure are already pasting work into free chatbots, usually with good intentions and no guidance, because no one has said what is allowed. This session is practical rather than speculative, and assumes no technical background.
01Opening · 10 min
How is it already being used here?
Each participant names one way someone at the organization is already using these tools. The answers are usually more varied than leadership expects, and set up the session.
02Part one · 20 min
What these tools do, and what they do not
Plain language, no jargon, and the specific failure modes that follow from how they work. Confident wrong answers, invented sources, and why checking is not optional.
03Part two · 20 min
Good fit, poor fit, never
A sorting exercise using twelve real nonprofit tasks. The group places each one, then argues the cases where it disagrees, which is where the useful line gets drawn.
04Part three · 15 min
Client information and the red lines
Confidentiality, consent, and what free tools do with what you give them. The group lists, by category, the information that must never be entered.
05Part four · 15 min
Asking a vendor the right questions
Training, retention, deletion, and location. The question set is applied to a product someone in the room is actually considering.
06Closing · 10 min
Your one-page position
The pieces assemble into a position the organization can take to its board, with a named owner and a date for review.
The one-page acceptable use position.
Organizations tend to answer this in one of two ways, and both fail. A blanket ban, which staff quietly ignore while the work still has to get done. Or silence, which is a blanket permission nobody wrote down and nobody can be held to. The position is the middle path: short enough to read in a board meeting, specific enough that a program manager knows on a Tuesday whether something is allowed.
Step 01
Name what the tools are for
The tasks where staff may use them, written in your words rather than a vendor's. Specific permission is what makes a red line credible.
Step 02
Draw the red lines
The categories of information that must never be entered into a general tool, listed explicitly enough that nobody has to interpret them.
Step 03
Name who checks
Any output reaching a client, a funder, or the public is reviewed by a person who is accountable for it. The tool is never the last step.
Step 04
Decide what you disclose
What you tell the people you serve, your funders, and your board. Deciding this now is far easier than explaining it later.
The five parts of the position.
Each part exists because a specific failure happens without it. Together they are the shortest document that a board can adopt and a staff member can actually follow.
PERMITTEDThe tasks where staff may use these tools, named specifically.Replaces a ban nobody follows.
RED LINESThe information that must never be entered, by category.Protects the people you serve.
REVIEWWho checks output before it reaches anyone outside.Keeps a person accountable.
DISCLOSUREWhat you tell clients, funders, and the board.Prevents a later surprise.
APPROVED TOOLSWhich products are cleared, and who changes that list.Stops quiet sprawl.
The Template
AI Acceptable Use Position and Vendor Questions
The position template ready to complete, a red line checklist by information type, and twelve questions to ask any vendor with what to listen for in the answers. Written as a starting point for your counsel to confirm, not as legal advice.
Full Session Outline
The session, its learning objectives, the ninety-minute agenda, and what participants take away, in a single document you can share with your team or funder. For the ongoing engagement behind this workshop, see Our process improvement engagements.
Featured Session
Board of Directors Service 101.
Most people join a nonprofit board because someone they respect asked them. Very few are ever told what the role requires, where it ends, or what they are legally responsible for. They learn by watching, which means they learn whatever habits the board already has. This session fixes that in ninety minutes, and it is built around doing rather than listening.
01Opening · 10 min
Why did you say yes?
Each participant answers in one line. Responses are read back, surfacing the range of reasons people serve and the expectations nobody ever stated.
02Part one · 20 min
The role: governance, not management
What a board owns and what staff own. The boundary is drawn, then tested immediately in a sorting exercise using fourteen real decisions.
03Part two · 20 min
The duty: care, loyalty, and obedience
The three fiduciary duties in plain language, what each looks like in a meeting, and the financial oversight that follows. Includes reading a real statement together.
04Part three · 15 min
The questions a board should ask
The handful of questions that separate oversight from operational drift, practiced against a scenario where the answer is genuinely unclear.
05Part four · 15 min
The skills gap: what this board is missing
The skills matrix completed before the session is rolled up and read out. The board sees its own depth by competency and sets recruitment priorities.
06Closing · 10 min
Your why, written down
Each member writes what they bring, what they will ask about, and why they serve. They keep it; the chair gets an anonymous summary.
The board skills gap analysis.
Most boards recruit from the networks of the people already sitting on them, which quietly reproduces the skills already in the room. A skills gap analysis replaces that instinct with evidence: what this board needs, who actually has it, and where the bench is thin enough to be a risk. The matrix is completed before the session, and part four reads the result out loud.
Step 01
Set the need level
Before anyone scores themselves, the board marks each of eighteen competencies essential, desirable, or not required for this organization.
Step 02
Each member rates themselves
Privately, in about ten minutes, on a four-point scale from no exposure through to able to lead the board’s thinking on it.
Step 03
Roll the scores up
One grid places every competency against every seat and counts how many members have working knowledge of each. That count is the board’s depth.
Step 04
Classify and decide
Depth is compared against need level, every gap is classified, and the board leaves with a ranked list of what to recruit for and what to develop.
How the gaps are read.
Every essential competency lands in one of four states. The state sets the action, which is what turns a scored grid into a recruitment plan a board can defend to anyone who asks how its members are chosen.
Critical gap
Essential to the mission, and nobody on the board has working knowledge of it.
What the board doesRecruit for this first.
Single point
One member carries it alone. The capability leaves the day that member rotates off.
What the board doesRecruit a second, or develop one.
Adequate depth
Two or more members can hold a real conversation about it and challenge an answer.
What the board doesHold it, and protect it through turnover.
Concentrated
More than half the board shares one strength, which usually means one recruiting network.
What the board doesWiden where you look for members.
The Worksheet
The Board Skills Matrix and Gap Analysis Worksheet: the self-assessment, the board-wide roll-up grid, the gap classification and recruitment priorities, and a composition snapshot. Yours to keep and reuse whenever a seat opens.
Full Session Outline
The session, its learning objectives, the ninety-minute agenda, and the skills gap analysis in full, in a single document you can share with your board or chair.
Featured Session
Project Management for NPOs 101.
Nonprofit teams run projects constantly and almost never call them that. A new program launches, a site opens, a system gets replaced, a grant requires something delivered by a date. The work is real and the stakes are real, but it is managed in meetings and inbox threads, and the discipline that would carry it to a finish is missing. This session supplies that discipline in ninety minutes.
01Opening · 10 min
Name a project that stalled
Each participant names an initiative that lost momentum and the point at which it did. The pattern in the answers sets up everything that follows.
02Part one · 20 min
Defining done
Scope statements, stated exclusions, and acceptance criteria. The group writes the finish line for the initiative it brought, then tests whether an outsider could verify it.
03Part two · 20 min
Breaking the work down
How small a piece of work needs to be before it can be owned and estimated. The team builds a work breakdown structure for its own project, live.
04Part three · 15 min
Ownership and dependencies
Every deliverable gets one name. Dependencies are mapped, and the exercise usually reveals that the schedule is driven by something nobody was tracking.
05Part four · 15 min
Risk, cadence, and the check-in that holds
A risk and decision log simple enough to maintain, and a standing agenda that surfaces trouble while there is still time to act on it.
06Closing · 10 min
Your one-page charter
The pieces are assembled into a charter the team takes with them, and the first check-in is scheduled before anyone leaves the session.
The one-page project charter.
Most nonprofit projects have no project document at all. The ones that do usually have a twelve page plan written to satisfy a funder, filed once, and never opened again. Neither helps the person deciding on a Tuesday whether something is on track. The charter is one page, written in the room, and short enough that the team will keep it current.
Step 01
Write the finish line first
What is delivered, what is explicitly not, and how anyone will know it is done. Exclusions are what make a later change a decision rather than an argument.
Step 02
Break the work down
Into pieces small enough that one person can own one and estimate it honestly. If a task cannot be estimated, it is still too big.
Step 03
Assign one owner to each piece
A name, not a department and not a committee. Owners can delegate the work; they cannot delegate the answer to how it is going.
Step 04
Set the cadence and the log
A standing check-in with a fixed agenda, and one place where risks, issues, and decisions are written down as they happen.
The five fields, and why each is there.
Each field exists because a specific failure happens without it. Together they are the shortest document that still answers the questions that matter mid-project.
DONE MEANSThe deliverable stated in terms someone outside the team could verify.Stops scope drifting quietly.
NOT INCLUDEDWhat this project is explicitly not doing, written down at the start.Makes change control possible.
OWNEROne named person accountable for each deliverable, with a named backup.Ends shared responsibility.
DEPENDS ONThe inputs this work cannot start without, and who provides each.Finds the real critical path.
CHECK-INWhen the team meets, what it reviews, and who escalates what.Catches late before it is late.
The Template
Work Breakdown Structure Template
The template the session is built around: a worked example, deliverable, owner and dependency columns, the one-page charter, and a check-in agenda your team can adopt as it stands.
Full Session Outline
The session, its learning objectives, the ninety-minute agenda, and what participants take away, in a single document you can share with your team or funder. For the ongoing engagement behind this workshop, see The Project Management Engagement.
Featured Series
Performance Measurement 101.
Measurement has a vocabulary, and almost nobody working in a small nonprofit was ever taught it. Funders write outcomes, baseline and indicator as though everyone agrees what they mean, staff nod because asking feels like admitting something, and the confusion gets built into the report. This course is the plain-language fix. The first session is entirely vocabulary.
01Vocabulary · 60 min
What These Words Actually Mean
If we are going to talk about this, what are we saying?
- Input, activity, output, outcome and impact, defined one at a time with examples
- Measure, metric and indicator: three words for nearly the same thing, and when each is used
- Baseline, target and benchmark, and why a number means little without the first one
- Quantitative and qualitative, and why a small organization needs both
- Data, evidence and proof, which are not the same and are often used as though they are
You leave withA one-page glossary in plain English that you keep and can hand to anyone
Read first: Outputs vs. Outcomes
02The Distinction · 60 min
Outputs and Outcomes
What is the difference everything else rests on?
- How much we did, against whether anything changed, with many worked examples
- Why organizations report outputs: they are easy to count and already captured
- What a funder is actually asking for when they ask about impact
- Sorting real lines from real nonprofit reports into one column or the other
- Short, medium and long-term outcomes, and which ones you can honestly claim
You leave withYour own current reporting, sorted, with the gaps visible
03In Practice · 60 min
What a Simple System Looks Like
If we started on Monday, what would we actually do?
- Where numbers come from: forms, registers, and conversations you already have
- Why every measure needs one person's name against it
- What a one-page view looks like, and who reads it
- How often to look, and what a review meeting actually does
- The three measures a small organization should start with, and what to ignore for now
You leave withThe first three measures your organization would start with, and the first step
Read first: What a Nonprofit Dashboard Should Actually Show
How each session runs.
Taught slowly, one term at a time, each with an example from a real nonprofit. Questions are welcome at any point, including the ones that feel obvious, and five minutes at the top of every session is protected for exactly that.
First 5 minutes
Questions from last week
Anything that did not land, asked openly. This is the most useful five minutes in the course and it is protected deliberately.
Next 25 minutes
The words and what they mean
Taught slowly, one term at a time, each with an example from a real nonprofit. Nothing assumed and no jargon used before it is defined.
Next 25 minutes
Trying it on your own reports
The group applies what was just defined to documents they brought. This is where the vocabulary stops being abstract.
Last 5 minutes
What to bring next time
Something small and specific, usually a document you already have rather than work you have to do.
The participant toolkit
Everything is plain English and free of jargon. The glossary is one page and is meant to be handed to the next person who joins.
- The plain-English glossary, one page
- An outputs and outcomes sorting set with an answer key
- A worked example from a real nonprofit program
- A blank one-page view to sketch on
- Three questions to ask at your next board meeting
- A short reading list, all free
What you finish with
A vocabulary the whole team shares and uses correctly, your own current reporting sorted into outputs and outcomes with the gaps visible, the first three measures your organization would start with, and a glossary you can hand to the next person who joins. This course deliberately stops before building a system.
The four-part series builds what this introduces →Knowing the words is the start, not the finish.
This course deliberately stops once a team can use the vocabulary and name what it would measure. It does not build anything. That is the right place to stop for an introduction, and it is also where most organizations stall, because the next step needs time and tools that a small team does not have spare. That part is what CAMPBELL builds. A dashboard designed around the decisions your leadership actually makes, connected to the data you actually hold, that updates itself and still works a year later. Where your website is also carrying the job of explaining your impact publicly, the two get built together.
Dashboard builds
A measurement system and the view that carries it, designed around decisions rather than around whatever data happens to exist.
Website builds
A site that reflects the organization you are, including the impact story the measurement finally lets you tell honestly.
Built to hand over
Documented, owned by a named person on your team, and maintainable without us.
Next Step
The next conversation is a short one: what does your leadership need to see, and how often. Those two answers shape everything after them.
Full Series Outline
Every session, what it covers, what to bring, what you leave with, and how each session is structured, in a single document you can share with your team or board.
Problems We Solve.
Workshop engagements address the capability gaps that make every other initiative harder than it needs to be.
Boards unclear on their role
Governance and management responsibilities blur, and meetings drift into operational detail.
Strategy that stays with leadership
Staff cannot connect their daily work to the organization's strategic priorities.
Discomfort with data
Teams avoid performance conversations because the measures feel unfamiliar or punitive.
Inconsistent execution
Projects are run differently by each person, with no shared planning or accountability language.
Consultant dependency
The organization has the deliverable but not the internal capability to repeat the work.
Onboarding gaps
New board members and staff learn the organization informally and unevenly.
The Benefits
What You Gain.
Internal capability that stays with your organization, and a shared language that makes the next initiative easier.
Practical, applied skill
Participants leave having used the material on a real organizational situation.
A shared vocabulary
Board, staff, and leadership describe strategy, performance, and execution the same way.
Reusable tools
Templates, frameworks, and job aids the organization keeps and continues to use.
Reduced outside dependency
Capability built internally rather than repurchased for every new initiative.
Next Steps
How to Get Started.
Every engagement begins the same way, with a conversation. There is no cost and no obligation to schedule one.
01
Schedule a consultation
Tell us the audience, the group size, and the capability gap you want closed.
02
Choose the workshops
We confirm which sessions fit, the right audience for each, and whether a single session or a series is the better format.
03
Confirm the design
Session length, depth, and the real organizational situations each session will be built around.
04
Finalize the agreement and schedule the sessions
Dates, materials, and participant preparation are confirmed.
What We Need From You
Participant roles and group size, any organizational materials you want used as real-world examples, and confirmed scheduling. Final scope is confirmed through discovery.
Related Engagements
Where Capability Gets Applied.
Training builds the skill. These engagements are where organizations usually put it to work.
Strategic Planning
Boards and leadership teams that share a planning vocabulary get far more out of a planning process.
Learn More →Performance Measurement
Teams comfortable with outputs, outcomes, and indicators adopt a measurement system rather than avoiding it.
Learn More →Project Management
A shared delivery language is what makes project discipline stick after the engagement ends.
Learn More →Schedule a Consultation
Let’s talk about what your organization needs.
A consultation is a conversation, not a sales call. We will discuss where you are, what you are trying to resolve, and whether this engagement is the right fit.
Schedule a ConsultationExplore Our Services
See the full range of CAMPBELL engagements.
Strategy, program design, performance measurement, grants, operations, and more, delivered virtually to organizations across all 50 states.
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