I'm starting here deliberately. Private foundations are my first wave — and this is exactly what I'd say in the room.
Private foundations are navigating one of the most complex moments in the history of philanthropy. The urgency of the problems they care most about has never been greater. And the pressure to demonstrate that their grantmaking is actually working — not just well-intentioned — has never been higher.
At the same time, a familiar pattern is showing its limits. Foundations have long built portfolios by funding individual organizations working on connected issues — pro-democracy work, climate justice, human rights. The cause is shared. But too often the organizations within that ecosystem are working in parallel, unaware of each other, sometimes in competition, rarely in coordination. The ecosystem fragments even as the funding flows.
Leadership is also in transition. A generation of foundation leaders who built these portfolios over decades is stepping back. New leaders are stepping in with mandates to do something different — and without always knowing where to start. The moment calls for more than a new strategy. It calls for a new way of working.
When foundations reach a moment of transition, the instinct is to bring in outside help. An expert. A firm with a proven framework. A research process thorough enough to feel unimpeachable — hundreds of interviews, months of synthesis, a final report delivered with confidence.
I want to change that pattern. Not because expertise is wrong. But because a report handed to an internal team that didn't build it rarely holds. The strategy sits. The moment passes. The team inherits a document instead of a direction.
The organizations that actually transform are the ones where the diagnosis was honest, the internal team owned the work from the beginning, and the solution was designed for this problem — not the problem the sector already knows how to fund.
The philanthropic infrastructure erodes — slowly, through repetition of models that no longer fit. The causes foundations have championed for decades lose ground. The organizations fighting those fights become more isolated, more under-resourced, and less able to coordinate at the scale the moment demands.
Progress doesn't just stall. It reverses. The window to change course narrows. This is not a warning about failure. It is a description of what's already in motion.
Go Advisory works inside foundations at moments of real transition. I start with the problem — not the solution. Before anything else, I help foundations name what is actually broken, with the candor that requires and the trust that makes it possible. That diagnosis shapes the solution — one that challenges old assumptions and points somewhere new.
I surface the Go Team — the people already inside the organization who are ready to lead this work. I join that team as a member, not a director. I shepherd the work from inside, testing and iterating, until the capacity is theirs. Two to three clients at a time. Criteria-based handoffs, not timelines.
27 years across for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Seven years building at the intersection of movement infrastructure, civic incubation, and philanthropic strategy — working with both foundations and their grantees, and understanding what each can't see from where they stand.
The crossover is not a credential. It is the source of the outside thinking this work requires. And it is what makes the solutions Go Advisory proposes ones the sector wouldn't have proposed for itself.
If this resonates, I'd welcome a conversation.
Go Advisory. Built for organizations in motion.