Built to Break — Free Working Session with Brooke Richie-Babbage

WED, SEP 16 · 1:00 PM ET

Free LIVE Working Session FOR NONPROFIT EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS

WHY ARE YOU STILL THE GLUE HOLDING ORGANIZATION TOGETHER?

You have a real team, board and revenue base. So why does everything still depend on you?

Join me for Built To Break, a free 60-minute hands on working session for nonprofit CEOs leading $1M–$5M organizations. You'll identify where your organization has outgrown its current structure, and the first thing to redesign so growth stops creating more work, fragility, and dependence on you.

Reserve your seat

Wednesday, Sept 16
at 1:00 PM ET

Live Working Session · 60 minutes | Diagnostic worksheet, Live interaction, Q&A

Built to Break: A live organizational diagnostic for nonprofit CEOs.

The pattern

You're solving problems organizations at your stage shouldn't still have.

Your organization is bigger. But is it stronger?

Decisions your directors should own still land back on your desk.

You've delegated it — more than once — and 48 hours later it boomerangs back.

Your revenue keeps growing, and somehow the whole thing feels more fragile, not less.

Your board shows up, but they're still governing like you're a $400K organization.

Your best donor relationships live in your phone, not in a system — if you stepped back, the revenue steps back with you.

You're leading from depletion, editing emails at 11pm instead of doing the work only you can do.

None of that is a time-management problem. None of it is fixed by hiring one more person. And it isn't happening because your team isn't capable.

It's happening because your organization has quietly outgrown the structure that once made it successful.

You crossed $1M — but you're still running the operating model you built at $400K. The stakes are just higher now.

I call that gap a Design Deficit. And if you don’t address it, more growth and impact can actually make your organization more fragile:

This 60-minute diagnostic working session shows you how to recognize those signals, and more importantly, what to redesign while you still have the margin to act before year-end.

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"Every decision looped back to me. Delegation didn't stick. Everything felt like a house of cards. Six months later we'd built a real C-suite, freed up five hours of meetings every week, and I finally looked around the room and realized my team was truly leading without me."

Kalilah, Executive Director

During this working session

In 60 minutes, we’re going to diagnose where your organization is under strain.

This is not a webinar about becoming more productive. And I’m not going to give you twelve new things to add to your to-do list.

Where your organization is structurally underbuilt for its current size.

What is probably a people problem, and what only looks like one.

Which pressure point is creating the greatest dependence on you.

What needs to change before you add more staff, programs, or revenue.

You'll leave with your own Built to Break Diagnostic: a simple audit tool showing where your organization is carrying more complexity than its current structure can support.

Yes — I Want To Diagnose My Org →

"Within one year we'd grown the budget by 50% — and I was a different leader."

When we met, things were falling apart. Brooke didn't just hand me information — she made the impossible feel clear. The structural work changed everything.

LaFrae, Nonprofit CEO

Imagine leading an organization that no longer depends on your constant intervention.

Where directors own outcomes, not just tasks.

Where your board governs strategically — and activates its network — instead of waiting on you.

Where your leadership meetings are about the future, not putting out fires.

Where you could step back for two weeks — or hand it off in three years — and the organization wouldn't just survive. It would keep moving forward.

That isn't wishful thinking. It's what happens when an organization is intentionally designed for the level of impact it's trying to create.

Resilience isn't about grit. It's about good design.

Reserve My Seat →

Your host

Hi, I'm Brooke

I’ve spent more than 25 years building, leading, funding, advising, and teaching inside the nonprofit sector. I founded and led my own nonprofit. I’ve sat on the funder side of the table. And today, through Bending Arc, I advise nonprofit CEOs who are navigating one of the hardest transitions in organizational growth: The point where the organization becomes too large and complex to keep operating around the founder or CEO.

My work focuses on the infrastructure underneath sustainable growth — how leadership teams operate, how decisions get distributed, how boards mature, how revenue becomes more resilient, and how the CEO’s role changes as the organization grows.

Because getting bigger is not the same thing as becoming stronger. The organizations that scale sustainably redesign themselves as they grow.

That’s what I’m going to help you begin doing in this session.

25+

Years as a founder, strategist, and professor in the sector

100s

Of CEOs guided through the $1M+ inflection point

2.3x

Average budget growth for NLNP members

Founder + National Strategist · Graduate & Law Professor · Host, Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast · Creator of the Design Deficit™ and Stability Flywheel™

Fit check

This session is — and isn't — for you

This is for you

✓You lead a $1M–$5M nonprofit — real team, real board, real budget

✓You have directors (or program managers you wish were directors), and your week still starts with the list of things they couldn't move without you

✓You've delegated it — more than once — and it still boomerangs back to your desk

✓Your revenue keeps growing, and somehow it feels more fragile, not less

✓Your board is still governing like you're a $400K organization

✓Your biggest funder relationships live with you, not in a system

✓You're leading from depletion — editing emails at 11pm instead of doing the work only you can do

✓You want to know the organization could thrive without you — a real sabbatical, or one day a clean handoff — and right now you're not sure it could

✓You know something structural is off. You just can't name it yet.

This is not for you

✕You're pre-$1M and still building your first systems and first leadership hires

✕You're looking for tactics and templates, not a redesign of how your organization distributes ownership

✕You're not the CEO or Executive Director

✕You're not open to the possibility that the problem is in the design, not the people

WEDNESday, SEPTEMBER 16 · 1:00 PM ET

Your next stage of growth requires a different organization.

60 minutes. Live working session. Built for the $1M+ nonprofit CEO who wants to walk into year-end knowing the structure underneath can actually hold the weight — instead of hoping it will, and being the one who holds it when it can't.

This is a working session, not a webinar. At the end, I'll share how I work with leaders ready to redesign.

Yes, save my seat

Free | Wednesday, September 16 at 1:00 PM ET