Consulting & Thought Leadership for Mid-Sized Communities
See the crisis. Talk straight. Adapt.
Helping mid-sized communities build local, results-driven, sustainable solutions before the funding cliff.
Your community's safety net depends on someone else's budget.
For 40+ years, communities have outsourced charity to distant state and federal funding. Today that money makes up 60, 70, even 90% of the budgets of local social service organizations.
Legacy obligations like pensions, Social Security, and Medicare will force cuts. Those cuts will come either through deliberate budget reductions or through fiscal crisis.
Early movers will be better positioned.
60–90%
of local social service budgets come from distant state and federal funding.
How vulnerable is your community, and how prepared are you?
Three steps. One redesign.
Each step pairs a book with a service, so your community can move from awareness to action.
See the crisis
Book: The Looming Crisis
The Looming Crisis BriefingSTART HERE
A 90-minute session that shows your community where it stands and what's at stake.
Talk straight
Book: Straight Talk
1-Day Bootcamp
Funding Cliff Deep Dive
2-Day Cross-Sector Bootcamp
90-Day Pilot Planning
No more "Midwest nice."
Adapt
Book: Adapt or Die
90–180 Day Pilot
Implementation coaching & network access
Transformational
6+ month engagement
Sustained Success
Annual membership
The Looming Crisis Briefing
90 minutes to see where your community stands, and what to do next.
A briefing for your leaders on the funding crisis, why it's urgent, and why it takes straight talk to get ahead of it. It can be delivered virtually or in person as a breakfast or lunch session.
What's included
- A readiness questionnaire before the session
- A clarifying call to understand your community
- Content tailored to your community
- A post-session Pathfinder Call to map your next step
Built for mid-sized communities.
Redesigning Charity works with communities of 50,000–500,000 people, especially in the Midwest and Mountain West.
Chambers of Commerce
Civic conveners who set the agenda for local economic health.
Economic Development Organizations
Leaders who understand that workforce and community health are inseparable.
Private Local Foundations
Funders ready to move from check-writing to community transformation.
Churches
Faith communities with deep roots and a mandate to serve their neighbors well.
The thinking behind the work.
See the crisis.
The Looming Crisis
For 40+ years, communities have outsourced charity to distant funders. How vulnerable are you, and how prepared?
Talk straight.
Straight Talk
Vague, indirect language undermines communities. Until a community confronts reality, it can't create a vision.
Adapt.
Adapt or Die
The status quo can't solve 21st-century problems with 20th-century ideas.
Built by a leader who lived through the funding cliff.
Founder David Taylor led United Way of McLean County through the loss of more than $2 million in annual revenue (65%+ of its revenue) over two years, when major corporate funders withdrew.
The result was Workforce180, which costs as little as $5,000 to $6,000 annually per student trained.
~260%
ROI
$5K–$6K
annual cost per student trained
$1.5M+
annual local economic impact
The old system can keep running. A clearer one can start now.
Built on Decades of Real-World Experience
State Farm
18 years of experience
United Way of McLean County
12+ years of experience
Start with The Looming Crisis Briefing.
90 minutes to see where your community stands, and what to do next.