Shifting the focus from "we don't have enough money" to "how we transform our community"

Why does your client organization exist? For whom does it exist? What is the real need?


The most important work for a nonprofit consultant is guiding your client to ask the right questions. This course is for nonprofit consultants and you will be required to work with a client during the course.

What kind of future do your clients envision for your community — for the kids and for for their grandkids? What if it were possible to create the future they want simply by describing it? What if all decisions by your nonprofit boards — and every action taken by their executive directors — were aimed at that future? Our course gives you a 5-step process and proven tools to explore board and staff leadership observations and ask meaningful questions.

It’s actually quite simple but it requires asking questions, carefully gathering and examining the data, and seeing how all the available information can be combined in a statement of real need. The real need is aligned around the results your client organization must achieve in their community — results your clients have the power to bring into being. What will the community look like when your clients are 100% successful? You will discover how the board can be explicit in describing the real need and develop alignment in their organization.

Hurry! There are only 10 spots available at the special price of $97!

What You'll Learn

  • You will discover how to stretch the realm of the clients' status quo, challenge common assumptions, clearly articulate required results, always staying grounded with what worked in the past

  • You will learn how words are powerful delegation… and your clients' board will understand just how much their words matter

  • You will learn how words are used to stimulate creativity and not to describe the actions to achieve the transformation. But, 1) It needs to be a challenge, and 2) It needs to be possible.

  • Using Appreciative Inquiry and SOAR techniques, you will be able to determine if the community's need is real and if the required transformation is a compelling remedy

  • You will be able to teach your clients how to use the real need statement be diligent in communicating … and know the communications will attract the necessary resources to make it so. “Without common ideas, there is no common action, and without common action men still exist, but a social body does not. Thus in order that there be society, and all the more, that this society prosper, it is necessary that all the minds of the citizens always be brought together and held together by some principle ideas” ― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Meet Your Instructors

Sherry S Jennings, PhD

Sherry S Jennings, PhD

Sherry S. Jennings, PhD is the founder and principal consultant of Sound Governance. Prior to starting her private practice, Sherry served as an executive of a national nonprofit trade association serving nearly 200,000 members. Sherry has over 13 years of experience in consulting with organization leaders on developing sound organizational policies and practices. Her clients benefit from positive, strength-based strategies to determine the factors and forces that bring about success. Sherry has assisted a wide variety of clients and industries — agriculture, arts, banking, education, healthcare, human services, international marketing and trade, public lands, utilities, technology, and more.

Robert J Ballantyne

Robert J Ballantyne

Robert Ballantyne is the principal of Ballantyne & Associates. While in his early twenties, Robert was able to combine his desire to tell stories with film (he still has his 16mm Bolex camera) and his love of astronomy when he was hired by the Planetarium Dow in Montreal. Over the next 20 years he produced planetarium shows in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. During his 8 years in Toronto he learned how to be a spokesperson for the McLaughlin Planetarium. Then he was off to direct the Manitoba Planetarium in Winnipeg for a decade. While in that city he was elected president of Winnipeg AM, and then president of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. He was appointed the honorary chair of the Cross Canada Science fair, and later elected president of the Canadian Nature Federation. For a year he was the Interim CEO of the Marmot Recovery Foundation. Along the way he has performed several radio series and written a newspaper column. Since 1989 he has been a consultant working out of Bowen Island near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Ready for engaged, results-driven client boards?

This course features co-creation, which means lots of personal interaction with the instructors!

Enroll now

Course Curriculum

  • 1

    Welcome to our pilot program using co-creation

  • 2

    Session 1 - Introductions and Resources

  • 3

    Session 2 - Starting with your Client Board

    • Session 2 - Starting with your Client Board
    • Module 1 - Appreciative Inquiry Principles to Explore the Real Need
    • Module 2 - AI Generic Questions
    • Session 2 - Homework - Word Doc
  • 4

    Session 3 - Review the Homework and Prepare for Week 4

    • Module 1 - Using SOAR Principles
    • Module 2 - SOAR_your client's org.pdf
  • 5

    Session 4 - Volunteers Donors and Funders

    • Session 4 - Homework - Word Doc
  • 6

    Session 5 - Review the Homework and a Bonus Lesson

    • Target Messages Video