Why Go Advisory exists
Traditional models that worked for decades no longer do. Shifts in funding, leadership and capability require us to ask difficult questions we'd avoid, implement strategies we don't know how to implement, and invest in the work that's first to go.
Go Advisory exists to make mission-driven work legible, funded and permanent—instead of quiet, volunteer, and on the side.
Who this is for
Foundations in motion
The portfolio model, the approach to grantmaking and the leadership are moving at the same time. The strategy on paper stays on paper.
Agencies and companies ready to commit
The social impact work runs on pro bono time, treated as separate from the real work and carried by one person who believes in it.
How I work
Both of these have the same shape: a gap between what an organization intends and what it can carry. I work on the second half.
I don't deliver my work. I build the capacity for you to implement yours.
I don't design my role as a dependency. I design my exit into the first conversation.
The Principals
The capability is usually already in the building. What's missing is the match—the right people on the right parts of the work, with the seniority to decide and the investment to sustain it. I work at principal level throughout—in the room where it's decided, on the team where it's built.
Funder and grantee. Board and executive team. Client and creative. I hold both mandates at once without flattening either, and name the option neither could see alone. Neither side does that on the strength of the idea. They do it on trust.
On trust — Trust is not a soft idea. It's the mechanism that makes everything else possible—new programs, long-term relationships, institutional change. I've spent twenty-seven years learning how to build it, protect it, and use it to help organizations do things they didn't believe they could.
An introduction and an invitation
Twenty-seven years across the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Founder of Go Advisory; Executive Director and founding member of AGO; and former senior executive at an IPG network agency.
If this resonates, I'd welcome a conversation: gillian@go-advisory.co
Or maybe you have a cause you care about, the resources to back it, and a rough sketch—but no route from sketch to standing program. Reach out.