Lori Stanley, NonProfit Consulting

Lori and her colleague Rasheeda guided our nonprofit organizations to develop a financial empowerment collaborative. Their leadership helped us to clarify our thinking, define our vision and the [take] steps necessary to create our collaborative. Lori and Rasheeda kept us focused and took complex work and broke it down into manageable steps so we could move forward. They engaged key stakeholders to identify the core requirements and critical success factors for collaboration.

As a result, we have a shared vision, our principles of agreement to work and make decisions together, a strategy, and we can build the infrastructure for our collaborative. More importantly, we can expand our community reach and scale our services to support more people in need of financial empowerment.

We engaged with Lori to guide our strategic planning process. We knew we wanted an agile, updated [and] equity-focused plan that truly reflected the voices of service users and community. Lori skillfully planned and facilitated feedback sessions and focus groups, led our steering committee through some challenging and meaningful planning and discussions, and solidified our goal setting with us while ensuring those voices were heard and incorporated into our plan. She adapted quickly to understand our unique organization and community and to help us prioritize and articulate the work we need to do in the coming years. We’re confident that the work Lori has done with us provides a workable and purpose-driven strategy.

Lori supported us to create our strategic plan for 2023-2025. She created a safe, welcoming space for our planning committee to innovate and focus on what’s important to move our planning process forward. Our committee members were impressed by her facilitation skills, including her ability to help us clarify our thinking and be creative. Lori brings positive energy and momentum to the process. She was able to effectively engage our stakeholders and delivered our final strategic plan in a timely manner. We look forward to working with her again.

Lori’s strong engagement and forward-thinking approach ensured that we stayed on our path in developing a data-informed, concise and realistic strategic plan. Her strong relationship-building skills ensured our stakeholders felt comfortable providing honest and meaningful feedback. We have clarity on where we are going and a strong strategy to help us reach our goals and objectives. We know where to invest our energy and resources. It was a pleasure working with her and I would recommend her services for strategic planning.