Transforum Consulting

"Liberate the leader in everyone, and extraordinary things happen."

- Jim Kouzes and
Barry Posner

Non-Profit

Consulting Services | Our Clients | Testimonials

Non profits are perhaps the most creative organizations when it comes to making real work happen with very few resources. Excellent leadership is critical to maximizing the organization's ability to do more with less and to encouraging creative thinking. Often, it is the connections with other types of organizations that cause some of the greatest leaps in their efforts to address social and community needs. TransForum Consulting is dedicated to developing the leadership capacity of individuals working in the non-profit sector.

Executive Coaching

Leadership in a highly stressful environment with scarce resources is a challenging role. Our completely customized coaching process focuses on your personal and professional needs. We listen, provide ideas, act as a sounding board and challenge your thinking to assist you in accelerating the progress towards your goals.

Organizational Development

When you know the direction you want to go as an organization and it just isn't happening fast enough or perhaps at all, we will work with you to devise a customized process to getting you to where you want to be. Oftentimes, it is hard for a non-profit to implement its desired plan due to the pressures of getting the everyday work done. We work with you to devise a schedule and process that fits your particular needs while establishing a positive directional force that will engage everyone in the organization and help you to reach your desired outcome. For example, often it involves carefully structured conversations to bring out the "elephant on the table" in a way that acknowledges what isn't working and focuses on how it can work. Sometimes it involves devising new organizational processes such as employee evaluations, hiring processes or orientation procedures that actually support the organization's goals. Always, the process is anchored in the real work of the organization as the primary mechanism to make true, sustainable change happen.

Board Development and Facilitation

We have experience facilitating boards, running board development sessions and serving on boards. Our highly customized process is designed to get out individual points of view quickly and completely and to maximize the board's ability to move the organization forward in a supportive and positive way.

Peer Learning

Our non-profit peer learning process is based on extensive research in the best of peer learning processes. Peer learning is a process whereby peers in an industry/organizational group come together to learn from the experiences-and not the advice-of their peers. This is a wonderful way to access a "brain trust" of executive directors who can listen to your issue, share their experience with you in a structured way and allow you to develop your own ideas about the possibilities that exist for resolution of your issue/dilemma/problem. In many ways it is like "just-in-time" consulting.

Leadership Workshops

We have developed a series of leadership workshops that focus on specific skills and habits of mind. Some of these workshops include: individual leadership development, running effective meetings, managing conflict and project leadership. All of the workshops are based on action-learning which means we focus on your organization's specific developmental needs and issues while learning new skills.

Speaking Engagements

We can help you boost your organization's energy, help launch a new way of working, and jump-start creative thinking.

Some of our valued clients include

Planned Parenthood
Community Foundation of Greater Flint
BEST Project
Children's Home of Detroit
Focus: HOPE
Migrant Health Promotion
Avalon Hospice in Flint Michigan

Testimonials:

"We've faced a lot of major challenges this year and we've had a lot of work we've had to do to meet them. The difference between when we started this process and now is that the attitudes of the employees have changed dramatically. Previously, the attitude would have been doom and gloom. We have moved from this attitude to a can do, will do, want to do attitude and the difference is amazing. We have moved from having people who wouldn't work together to people who seem to enjoy working together. We have had a dramatic turnaround in patient numbers due, in part, to the new PlanFirst program from the State of Michigan. The clinic atmospheres feel palpably different and more positive. Perhaps one of the most significant processes that has continued to reinforce our vision, values and principles of practice is the new evaluation system. Once we began to apply this system, employees really had to face what they were and were not doing to support the work and culture at PPECM."

- Jim Richardson, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of East Central Michigan

"I want to take this time to thank both of you for continued support and encouragement. You have provided me with valuable instructions that I feel has helped my transition from the clinician to the clinician/manager. The guidance and information you have provided for me I feel has made me a better manager and I am able to solve some of my own concerns and fears regarding being manager. I love my dual role and it hasn't been easy. I feel with the skills you have given me and my own passion to succeed I can conquer my small part of the world. So Jeannette and Maria I again say thank you."

- Marie Elliot, Planned Parenthood of East Central Michigan