They were hemorrhaging cash, losing trust, and stalling out—until we cleaned house and built a system that actually works.
This case study is for executive directors, growth leads, and founders inside educational or arts-based non-profits who are hitting a ceiling. You’ve got an audience, a mission, and momentum—but internally, it’s a mess. Tech is scattered. Leadership is unclear. Revenue is stalled.
Here’s how I helped one organization go from $0/month to $19,000/month in under 8 months—while also avoiding $60,000 in sunk costs and $22,800/year in future revenue-share losses.
When I stepped in, they were about to burn another $60,000 on a custom platform they didn’t need (after already spending $40,000 on it). They had no clear leadership, fragmented infrastructure, and a team that didn’t trust each other. They had potential—but no plan.
I stepped in both strategically and tactically to help fix the root issues: structure, trust, and monetization. This wasn’t about adding another tool—it was about cleaning up what was already there so they could scale without chaos.
No Online Revenue: Despite having donors, email subscribers fans and social media followers, they had no monetization strategy. Their digital presence was a one-way street—engagement was happening, but no revenue was coming in. They had attention, but no plan for turning it into income.
Leadership Paralysis:
The organization had no single point of authority. Decisions were made through consensus, which became impossible to maintain as they grew. Everyone had a voice, but no one had a final say. This created delays, indecision, and blurred responsibilities.
Toxic Communication Culture:
There was high trust in the mission, but very little trust in each other. Difficult conversations were avoided. Misunderstandings turned into long-standing resentments. Conversations happened in silos, and everyone assumed the worst about each other’s intentions.
Disconnected Infrastructure: Their digital stack was made up of three different platforms for handling website content, email communications, and paid content delivery—none of which were connected. This led to dead links, clunky user experiences, and a huge drop-off in engagement. Visitors were falling through the cracks.
A $100,000 Mistake in Progress:
They had already spent $40,000 on a custom-built video membership platform and were about to greenlight another $60,000 to finish it. The outside development team had failed to inform them that platforms like Kajabi, Kartra, Podia—or even Wix, which they were already using—could’ve done the job out of the box. Instead, they were building something that only offered basic gated video access.
There was no email automation, no abandoned cart recovery, no upsell functionality, no analytics, and no ability to scale. Just a dead-end login portal. I stopped the project before it could drain more resources. In addition, this would have also locked them into paying a 10% revenue cut to the development company to "manage" their online video platform. Even if they never scaled beyond $19,000/month, that’s $22,800/year in recurring loss—far more than the $2,400/year cost of an out-of-the-box platform like Kartra.
Overextension Without Infrastructure:
At one point, they were simultaneously planning multiple new initiatives—each requiring major marketing effort, digital fulfillment, and audience engagement. None of them had the internal infrastructure or capacity to support the workload. They wanted to launch multiple digital products, relaunch existing offerings on a broken platform, plan an international event, and execute an on location national deep-dive educational experience—all at the same time.
While asking for all of this to be marketed, they were also unavailable or offline, often doing in person events across the U.S. And despite deciding to change development teams (a good move), they insisted the entire platform transition should happen while everything else was still in motion.
It wasn’t just a bandwidth problem. It was a strategic blind spot: trying to scale five things at once with no solid foundation. I had to help them slow down before they burned out their audience—and themselves.
No Clear Leadership: There was no one person accountable for vision or execution. The original leader was a gifted visionary, excellent at rallying people around a cause. But like many visionaries, he struggled to translate big ideas into actionable steps or communicate those steps clearly to a team. That ambiguity created a vacuum in decision-making, leaving the team stuck in loops of discussion with no clear outcomes. Without someone setting direction, projects stalled and momentum consistently died on the table.
Lack of Shared Vision:
Everyone believed in the mission, but no one could articulate the same end goal. Some wanted to scale fast, others wanted to preserve tradition. Some prioritized the website, others focused on events. Without a shared definition of success, energy was scattered and conflict was inevitable.
Disjointed Tech Stack:
Their tools weren’t just disorganized—they were actively working against them. A website on one platform, email campaigns on another, and content hosted on a third. None of them were integrated. Users would click from one touchpoint to another only to find broken pages or disconnected experiences. Every tool was duct-taped together, and the leaks were everywhere.
Vendor Misinformation:
The team relied heavily on a development team who was out of their depth. Instead of steering them toward industry-standard platforms with proven functionality, they pushed for custom solutions that were costly, rigid, and lacked basic features. It wasn’t just a bad fit—it was a massive misalignment of priorities and capability.
No Plan to Monetize:
Despite real demand and meaningful attention, there was no roadmap for converting audience interest into actual income. They had no offers, no pricing strategy, no funnel, no checkout system—nothing. It wasn’t just a sales problem; it was an absence of commercial thinking altogether.
Scaling Without Capacity:
They were trying to execute too many major initiatives at once—without infrastructure, team availability, or a realistic rollout plan. The result wasn’t momentum. It was chaos.
Stopped the Bleeding:
I audited their entire tech ecosystem and laid out for the board exactly how the dev project was burning money. Then I recommended (quite strongly) they shut it down before another dollar was wasted.
Rebuilt Trust:
I met with every member of the core team individually to understand their pain points and motivations. From there, I helped mediate hard conversations and model clear, non-defensive communication. In some cases, we had to acknowledge that certain people were simply unwilling to move forward—and removing them was the only way to get real traction.
Created Leadership Focus:
I didn’t pick a leader for them, but I made it clear that without a single point of authority, they would never scale. They took the advice seriously and appointed someone to steer the ship. The difference in speed and clarity was immediate.
Cleaned Up the Infrastructure:
I guided them on getting rid of the development team. This meant telling the team that they had to let go of the $40,000+ they had already sunk in their online platform. It was a tough conversation, but needed to happen. Then, I guided them in replacing that dev team with a new agency that could build the site they actually needed—something scalable, user-friendly, and fully integrated. While that project is still ongoing, we already began relinking dozens of broken touchpoints across their social bios, YouTube links, and email flows to stop the bleeding.
Monetized the Audience:
While infrastructure cleanup was in motion, I helped them launch their first digital offers. I focused on low-tech, high-trust sales strategies that didn’t require fancy funnels—just clarity, compelling value, and a functional checkout page. Those offers did $165,000 in under 8 months.
Put the Brakes on Chaos:
I gathered all the initiatives they had asked me to promote and showed them the results of their overextension—burnt-out audiences, confused messaging, and campaigns that were falling flat. After a heavy round of email promotion for one initiative, we never followed up—leaving their audience hanging. Open and click rates dropped. Trust eroded.
Seeing all of this, I sat them all down and I walked them through the damage they were doing by trying to market everything at once. It landed. They finally pumped the brakes. Since then, their audience is re-engaging, their team isn’t running on fumes, and every new campaign has a real chance to land.
$19,000/month in Online Revenue:
They went from $0/month to $165,000 total—averaging $19,000/month—in 8 months. This gave them breathing room—and the confidence to invest further.
Immediate Savings of $60,000:
By killing the custom dev project midstream, we saved $60,000 in additional spend.
Recurring Savings of $22,800/year:
The original development team had included a 10% cut of all online revenue. At $19,000/month, that’s $22,800 per year in recurring loss. We dodged a revenue-share trap that would have scaled with them indefinitely.
Team Health Restored:
The culture flipped. The team started having honest conversations, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, and holding real meetings instead of passive-aggressive vent sessions.
A Scalable Foundation:
Their tech stack is no longer a mystery. The right people are building the right things, and the next stage of growth can happen without starting from scratch.
Want results like this in your org?
If you’re leading a non-profit or mission-driven org and you’re stuck at a plateau—reach out. I work with a small number of teams each quarter to eliminate bottlenecks, build scalable revenue systems, and get everyone rowing in the same direction.
Let’s talk.
