Greg Harrell-Edge ran CoachArt, a nonprofit matching kids with serious illness to volunteers who teach arts and athletics. When he arrived, every new match took over seven hours of staff time. They built an app. That time dropped to under seven minutes. They quintupled matches made and went national during COVID.

But Greg's most useful story isn't the win - it's the mistake. Month two, they hired a full-time CTO. A year in, the development agency said the CTO didn't need to attend meetings anymore. Greg realised in real time: what they'd needed was a fractional.

Key Takeaways

• The nonprofit sector is in evolution, not crisis. Organizations doing things differently right now have real advantages - the fractional model is one of them.
• EDs are drowning in silver bullets. Position yourself as the person who helps them put it all together, not as another fix.
• The EDs most ready for fractional work think long-term, focus on impact metrics, and show up with cautious optimism.

Guest Bio

Greg Harrell-Edge is the Founder and Executive Director of the Proimpact Project, a free nonprofit community helping EDs lead future-ready organizations. A second-generation nonprofit leader, he previously served as ED of CoachArt and hosts the Proimpact Podcast.

Resources + Links

• Proimpact Project
• Proimpact ED Hive
• Proimpact Podcast
• CoachArt
• Nonprofit Fractionals Network
• NFN OS Program

Connect with Greg

Website | LinkedIn

---

Fracture is for nonprofit professionals who refuse to choose between doing good work and having a good life. Hosted by Cindy Wagman, founder of the Nonprofit Fractionals Network, it's real talk on building a fractional consulting business that actually pays - and still matters.

Subscribe to Fracture | Join the OS

Molly Terbovich-Ridenhour spent 15+ years in nonprofit arts organisations holding all the pieces - creative, human, operational, financial. When she left, she didn't just change jobs. She redesigned how she leads.

In this episode, she's honest about what she learned the hard way: the skills that made her excellent in-house become a trap in consulting if you don't actively work against them.

Key Takeaways

• The overfunctioning pattern from nonprofit leadership follows you into consulting unless you name it and actively work against it
• Boundaries are a practice, not a policy - especially for people who said they had them but didn't hold them
• Structure your calendar before other people fill it - time is the most important boundary of all
• The story you're telling yourself about client urgency is usually wrong - clients have more patience than you think
• Organisations often ask for X but actually need Y - naming that clearly is part of your job as a fractional consultant

Guest Bio

Molly Terbovich-Ridenhour is a fractional consultant with 15+ years in nonprofit arts leadership. She runs AMR, supporting small and mid-sized nonprofits through strategy, fundraising, and organisational complexity, from San Diego, California.

Resources + Links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-terbovich-ridenhour/
• https://nonprofitfractionals.com/

Connect with Molly

Website: mollyterbovich.com | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/molly-terbovich-ridenhour

---

Fracture is for nonprofit professionals who refuse to choose between doing good work and having a good life. Hosted by Cindy Wagman, founder of the Nonprofit Fractionals Network, it's real talk on building a fractional consulting business that actually pays - and still matters.

Subscribe: https://www.nonprofitfractionals.com/subscribe | Join the OS: https://www.nonprofitfractionals.com/os-join

This is Episode 1 of Fracture - and it's the one most listeners will wish they found years ago.

Fracture ran as a private podcast for a while. If you've been in the NFN community, you know it. Real conversations about building a fractional consulting business in the nonprofit sector, behind a door most people didn't know existed. Now the door is open.

In this episode, Cindy names the thing she sees keeping more nonprofit professionals stuck than anything else: the belief that impact and income are opposites. That if your work matters, you earn less. That the earning less is proof you care. She traces where that belief came from, why it's not a sector value - it's a deal that runs in one direction - and what happens when you stop accepting it.

This isn't a tips episode. It's a reframe. For anyone who's been excellent at nonprofit work while watching the system extract everything in exchange for barely enough - this one lands somewhere real.

Cindy also tells her own story: a women's shelter where she was the first and only fundraiser, watching board members suggest coin boxes at liquor stores and holiday card sales while she tried to run a real development program. A first consulting contract in 2015 that paid more than her in-house salary, alone. Building what eventually became the Nonprofit Fractionals Network - now 100+ people trained to run their own fractional practices.

Fractional consulting isn't freelancing. It's a model that lets you keep everything that brought you to the sector - the relationships, the work, the proximity to mission - and build a business that pays you what you're actually worth, and gives you back your time.

• The real reason nonprofit compensation is low (and why calling it mission alignment is a cover story)
• What fractional consulting is, in plain language, and why it's not freelancing
• How Cindy went from in-house fundraiser to NFN founder and what that path actually looked like
• The "both and" philosophy behind Fracture - impact + income, not impact or income
• What to expect from the show going forward

• Nonprofit Fractionals Network
• NFN OS Program
• Subscribe to Fracture + weekly email: nonprofitfractionals.com/subscribe

Fracture is for nonprofit professionals who refuse to choose between doing good work and having a good life. Hosted by Cindy Wagman, founder of the Nonprofit Fractionals Network, it's real talk on building a fractional consulting business that actually pays - and still matters.

Subscribe to Fracture | Join the OS