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Nonprofit program design for results starts with knowing whom you serve and what they want to achieve. Rob Jentsch of ADGN Education shows how that clarity can guide budgets, strengthen fundraising, and keep tempting funding opportunities from steering your mission off course.
A community center wants children reading on grade level. Then come a donor’s yoga classes, a science grant, and a community garden!! All good things. But are they moving those children toward the reading goal, or giving an already stretched team three more things to juggle?
Rob joins Julia C. Patrick and co-host Ellie Hume of Your Part-Time Controller for a lively conversation about nonprofit program strategy, resource allocation, and the confidence to keep funding aligned with purpose.
“It’s like an octopus tug of war where you’re pulled in so many different directions,” Rob says. Sound like your last leadership meeting?
His story about Cooperative for Education in Guatemala brings the stakes into focus. Rob reports that about 99% of the students consulted came from families with very tight resources, and all wanted access to a fair-wage job after high school. Listening to students helped clarify the support they needed: employment access, interview clothing, and soft skills. That clarity also gave the organization a stronger story to bring back to its board and donors.
Discover Rob’s results → reputation → revenue flywheel and his straightforward “theory of impact”: if we provide these supports, we expect this outcome. Ellie connects that thinking to leadership across finance, fundraising, and programs, while Rob brings HR and staff schedules into the equation.
Watch for a donor conversation that protects the reading program and still leaves room for a friendly invitation to hot yoga. Bring this discussion to your next leadership meeting and test whether your time, people, and money support the same result.
Key Takeaways
- Define the participant and desired outcome before selecting program activities.
- Assess funding opportunities against outcomes, staff capacity, and available time.
- Use participant interviews and surveys to strengthen strategy and donor communication.
- Build a written “if we provide X, then we expect Y” theory of impact.
- Align finance, HR, fundraising, and program leaders around the resources that outcome requires.
00:00:00 Designing Nonprofit Programs for Results and Revenue
00:01:41 Aligning Time, People, and Money With Strategy
00:03:38 The Stakeholder Tug of War
00:05:27 Start With the Participant and Desired Outcome
00:07:33 When Funding Pulls Programs Off Mission
00:09:52 The Results, Reputation, and Revenue Flywheel
00:12:06 Finding the Confidence to Push Back on Funding
00:15:10 Guatemala: What Students Actually Wanted
00:19:06 Communicating the “So That” Behind Your Program
00:22:19 Building a Theory of Impact
00:23:30 Redirecting a Donor Without Losing the Relationship
00:25:27 Aligning Finance, Fundraising, HR, and Programs
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