Blog
Notes from a chief of staff.
Practical writing for executive directors running a 2–10 person organization — what to delegate, how to design the operating week, and how a chief of staff actually fits.
Nonprofit executive director burnout: the four operational causes, and the fix that does not wait for a hire
Most burnout writing treats the symptom (emotional weight); the operational root is administrative drag. The four causes, mapped, and the fix that ships without waiting on a hire.
Nonprofit board management: the four artifacts that fix it without hiring a COO
Nonprofit board management eats two ED days a month most cycles. Four concrete artifacts — a briefing template, a governance calendar, a decision log, and a one-page prep packet — fix it without hiring a COO, and the line between what stays with the ED and what moves to the operator is the same line for every mission.
5 signs your nonprofit has outgrown spreadsheets
Spreadsheets stop carrying their weight long before a nonprofit notices. Five concrete signs the operating layer is overdue — board reporting, version chaos, donor handoffs, audit pain — and the small moves that put a real surface back underneath the ED.
Building AVCTC's operating layer: a ChiefDesk engagement
AVCTC engaged ChiefDesk to build the operating layer between their executive and the day-to-day work — the brief, the dashboard, the decision log, the weekly cadence — so the team can run from a single picture instead of a stack of drafts. Here is the first-pass scope, the four artifacts we are producing, and a short comment from the founder on what we are trying to build together.
What a chief of staff actually does for a small nonprofit
A chief of staff at a small nonprofit is the operator who turns the executive director’s draft thinking into shipped work. Here is what they actually do each week, what stays with you, and how the role differs from an EA or COO.