FOR NONPROFIT LEADERS
A working volunteer engine in eight weeks, without adding to your plate. Start with a 30-minute conversation. We'll figure out together whether your organization is a fit. No pitch. No follow-up sequence.
Whether or not we end up working together, you'll leave the call with at least two practical ideas you can apply this week.
30 minutes · No commitment · Direct with Eric
Most nonprofit leaders don't say that out loud - but they live it.
So when someone suggests recruiting more volunteers, the honest reaction is exhaustion. Because volunteers, in most organizations, are another program to launch, manage, and rescue when it falls apart. Another thing on your plate.
And on top of that, you've found yourself running point on workforce planning, IT decisions, fundraising strategy, board reporting - work you didn't sign up for and were never trained for. Most days you're performing competence in languages you don't actually speak.
You didn't start this to manage volunteers or fake fluency in someone else's domain. You started it to build something that matters. If you're carrying more than you should right now, you're not failing - you're operating without the system you need, and you've been trying to build it alone.
The same pattern shows up across nonprofits of every size and stage - from young scaling organizations to established legacy ones. Here's one example.
For years, ideas had been surfacing - from the board, from members, from longtime volunteers. Some got picked up. Most stalled. The leaders' real frustration wasn't a shortage of ideas or a shortage of volunteers - it was that volunteers weren't moving into action. Not because the ideas were wrong, but because nothing in the organization was set up to turn an idea into shared, follow-through work. Members cared. They just didn't have a structure that let caring translate into doing. And underneath that, a sharper fear: founding members were aging out, younger members weren't engaging, and without new energy coming in, the organization wouldn't survive them.
In eight weeks, working one hour a week, a small group of volunteers gained real clarity and focus on what their mission actually was - and what it could become. From there, momentum followed: they launched studio tours, art walks, and a community fundraiser that channeled proceeds toward providing food to people in crisis.
They adopted easy-to-use technology that helped them build their own media presence - and began reaching new members through channels the organization had never used, including outreach to people as young as high school. The fear that drove them to reach out for help - that they couldn't reach the next generation - started to ease.
The energy came from the volunteers themselves - once they had a structure that let ideas surface, get supported by peers, and turn into action. And the board got something they hadn't had before: a way to support the work without having to drive every piece of it.
"We didn't realize we could do this much, this fast. And it didn't feel hard."
That's a consistency problem, not a recruiting problem. People care. They start strong. Then life gets busy and momentum fades - and in the absence of an actual system, you become the system. That's the trap. The Contribution Circle solves for consistency directly: eight weeks, one hour a week, a small online group where people show up because others are counting on them. Not another framework to implement. Not a free-for-all. Just enough structure to let consistency and momentum take hold on their own. We bring the structure. Your volunteers do the work. Your team keeps the engine - on whatever cadence fits your organization, with our support whenever you need it.
A direct, 30-minute conversation. No slides, no pitch deck. The goal is to figure out whether a Contribution Circle is right for your organization — and if it isn't, to give you something useful anyway.
You tell me what you're actually dealing with. Where the energy is going, where it's leaking, what's not getting done.
I tell you whether this is the right fit. If your situation calls for something different, I'll say so — and point you toward what would actually help.
You leave with at least two practical ideas. Whether or not we work together, you'll walk away with things you can apply this week.
The eight-week Contribution Circle is free for nonprofit organizations. It's the entry point to a broader platform we're building to help nonprofits stay resilient, relevant, and effective over time. Your participation also contributes to ongoing doctoral research on what actually works - which is part of why the program is offered at no cost.
If this page makes sense for someone else at your organization - your Executive Director, your board chair, the person carrying it all - or someone you know, you can forward it directly with a short note.
Eric Westreich is the founder of Impactful Giving and Epic Footprints. Before this work, he spent his career building and running systems inside large enterprises and growth-stage government, industry, academic, and nonprofit organizations - which is where he started seeing how often the structures meant to enable meaningful work end up obstructing it. The Contribution Circle model is grounded in doctoral research on what helps nonprofits stay resilient and relevant over time. Currently working with leaders across San Diego - including TiE San Diego, Startup San Diego, Aquillius Institute, and the Career Catalyst Collaborative.