This piece is part of Learning from Nonprofit Leaders, a series of stories that share insights from 25 years of work with mission-driven organizations. Client names and identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality, and the story has been fictionalized, but the leadership examples provided in each story are real.
“I think Fred Armstrong, their CEO, is terrific,” said my friend Jane Meachum, as we were discussing the Merwin Youth Soccer Association, a new client. “My son, Nathan,” continued Jane, “was in Merwin Soccer. Fred came one day all the way from Atlanta to spend time with the kids. He was on a national tour visiting their chapters. He shot goals with my son Nathan, and they had a lot of fun together. Then, a year later, I happened to run into Fred at an airport, and he asked about Nathan. I was amazed. He runs this huge national soccer organization, and he remembered my son.”
The Merwin Youth Soccer Association was originally founded in the 1950s in a large southeastern city by Ed Merwin, an accountant by training with a love for kids and soccer. Over the years, the organization had grown to include more than 500 chapters across the country. It engaged youth ages ten to eighteen in soccer programs that also provided team-building and leadership-learning opportunities.
Fred Armstrong had called me several weeks ago from the organization’s headquarters, interested in building the organization’s internal capacity. “We’ve grown a lot in recent years,” he had said. “Our current organization was designed for a smaller operation. We need to retool to meet today’s demands and position ourselves for future growth.” I submitted a proposal for a strategic planning project, and Fred asked us to start right away.
Our team for the planning project included three Wellspring staff members, with Amy Anenberg in the project manager role overseeing the work of two other consultants—Lisa Gaffney and Britt Kelleher Jones. Together, we gathered data by interviewing thirty of Merwin’s board and staff members. We listened to 140 people in fourteen focus groups. We surveyed nearly four thousand people—teens, parents, alums, and advisors. As we reviewed the findings, some key themes emerged.
Merwin Youth Soccer was seen by our interviewees as offering a wonderfully welcoming environment where participants could build friendships, develop as leaders, and feel more connected with others in their town. Fred was often mentioned—how he listened, his deep commitment to the kids, and his care for the staff.
But we also heard that the organization was stretched thin. In five years, the number of participants had grown by twenty percent, while staff numbers had grown by only three percent. “I’m burning out, as are other people here,” said one field staff member. “I can’t even take a vacation day. There’s no one to cover for me if I’m out.”
We also heard reports about the parent volunteers. For the most part, they did a great job helping as chaperones on trips or lending a hand to run tournaments and gatherings. But sometimes there were problems with parents shouting on the sidelines, picking a fight with an umpire, or confronting the other team’s coach. And, from what we learned, many of the parent volunteers weren’t clear about the role they were supposed to fill.
Each month, our Wellspring team traveled to the organization’s headquarters for meetings with a planning team. We would gather with eight staff members on the second floor of a brick building near the heart of the city. The staff clearly cared about the organization’s well-being and each other. Fred would sit listening, with his close-cropped hair and strong forearms on the table. He often had good ideas for how to address issues the organization was facing. And he consistently brought a sense of possibility and optimism to the discussion.
During our second meeting, the problems facing the organization became increasingly clear. Our data showed that staff were quitting faster than they could be replaced. Parent volunteers weren’t showing up for games. Program data was dispersed across regions and wasn’t stored in a reliable central source, hampering top management’s ability to make good decisions. And fundraising efforts weren’t sufficiently coordinated at the local, regional, and national levels.
As we sat together in the planning team meeting, we all knew that something had to change if the organization was to continue growing successfully.
These were worrying signs. I knew of organizations that had gone out of business, like Sheltering Arms Children and Family Services in New York City. They had operated with a $100 million annual budget yet had gone out of business abruptly not long ago. While their story was different—their closure driven largely by the pandemic and chronic underpayment by the city—it still raised the specter that even a large organization’s survival can be more fragile than it might seem.
The following month, our team returned with the outlines of a plan for the organization: bring in more staff to alleviate burnout—particularly in those parts of the country where staffing was the weakest—and develop effective training for parent volunteers. These initiatives would be supplemented by more staff training in volunteer management and better data collection to track key performance indicators so Fred and his leadership team would know where their attention was needed most. The plan also defined how fundraising would be managed at different levels of the organization, including how volunteers and alums would be mobilized and coordinated in local and regional fundraising activities.
During the meeting with the planning team, we worked together to adjust the plan, clarifying the specific goals and how implementation would be feasible. At the following month’s meeting, our team brought detailed financial projections we had developed with the finance department and Fred. Increasingly, through meetings and conversations with many staff members, the plan was becoming more realistic and more feasible. It was also becoming theirs, owned by all of the staff and leaders who were contributing their ideas and time.
Whenever we spoke with Fred during our weekly check-in calls, he would offer suggestions and ideas for us, always informed by his vision of reaching more children and his care for their well-being and future. At the same time, he was remarkably trusting and encouraging in his approach. I’d worked with clients who saw it as their job to pressure consultants, make us sweat, and get every bit of possible work out of us. Fred was different. He engaged with us collaboratively, supporting us in doing our best work.
During one of the meetings near the end of our project, Fred was reflecting on the work. “I like this plan,” he said, mentioning how much he valued the way the work had been shared between his team and ours. “But I’m concerned about the cost,” he added, looking uneasy. We knew Fred had built the organization by keeping a lean budget. The organization had always been in the black. And he was right to be concerned. Investing in organizational capacity was a risk—a substantial risk at the level of investment needed. We hoped it would work. But would it?
At our final strategic planning meeting with Merwin’s board, Fred presented the strategic plan to his board members. The board members listened carefully. They asked astute questions. They expressed their concerns. Then, at the end of the meeting, they voted unanimously to approve the plan, and the whole room broke into applause. I was surprised—and appreciative and happy. Applause was unusual for our meetings. It was a good sign.
“That was an excellent meeting,” said Fred as we chatted after the board meeting. “The board members are backing us, and the plan gives us a clear road map for growth. Now, the next step is to raise the money.” He sounded determined.
Several months later, Fred called me. “After spending several months honing our fundraising message by talking with smaller funders,” he said, “I approached the Hollingmere Foundation about our plan. They’ve funded us in the past.” I knew that Hollingmere was one of the biggest funders of youth programs in the country. “They were really impressed with the clarity of our plan and the approach we laid out to handle growth,” continued Fred. “They thought the investments in organizational capacity were exactly right. They gave us a ten-million-dollar grant to be used over the next three years.”
“That’s huge,” I said, hearing the relief and excitement in Fred’s voice. “I’m so happy that came through. And I imagine that will make other fundraising easier, given that endorsement from Hollingmere.”
“Yes,” said Fred, “it most certainly will.”
I knew that our strategic plan had helped secure the grant and would continue to support Merwin in its future fundraising. But Fred’s way of being had made a huge difference as well. Throughout the project, Fred consistently looked for the positive and the possibilities. He trusted our consulting team to do good work, making it easier for us to do so. His warm, steady presence in meetings fostered collaborative problem-solving and decision-making. And his clear-minded view of the future had allowed us all to agree on a plan.
I imagined Hollingmere wasn’t only investing in a plan to add capacity to meet the needs of growth. They were also investing in Fred and his leadership capabilities. Perhaps that was the most important element. At that point, I had no doubt that Fred would continue to lead the organization to further growth and success.
As our team—Amy, Lisa, Britt, and me—debriefed the project and reflected on our work with Fred, we felt honored to have had the opportunity to work with him.
This series, Learning from Nonprofit Leaders, grows out of our work at Wellspring Consulting, a national management consulting firm serving nonprofit organizations. If you’d like to receive future stories in this series, you can subscribe on Substack here. I would also love to hear your reflections and experiences in the comments.