I've been advising early-stage organizations since 2015 and running a nonprofit since 2024, which means I've been on both sides of most of the conversations below: the side asking for money and the side deciding whether the ask makes sense.
What I'm good at is the part nobody's job description covers. The handoff between two organizations that both think the other owns it. The measurement question that's being avoided because the honest answer is inconvenient. The capital structure that fits work on a five-year horizon when every instrument available is built for one.
Information is not coordination.
That distinction is most of the work. Organizations usually have the information. What's missing is the mechanism that turns it into a decision somebody acts on.
Five things I'm actually hired for
Ecosystem & coordination design
Mapping who's doing what in a field, finding the overlaps and the holes, and designing the backbone function that keeps a coalition moving after the launch meeting. This is the center of my work and the thing I've built the most instruments for.
Typical clients: funders underwriting a multi-party initiative; networks that have grown past what one coordinator can hold; coalitions that agreed on everything and then stalled.
Capital architecture & funding strategy
How money gets into an organization and what it obligates you to once it's there. Gift acceptance and DAF mechanics, fiscal sponsorship structures, earned-revenue design, blended and recyclable capital models, and honest pipeline design, including which funders to stop pursuing.
What this is notI don't write grants for hire, I don't give investment advice, and I'm not a broker. I help you build the architecture and decide what to ask for; the asking stays yours.
Early-stage advising
Founders and small teams, usually in the first three years: what to build second, how to talk to capital, when a partnership is worth the coordination cost, and which of your assumptions is load-bearing. I've done this across AI, blockchain, food and legal tech, and in nonprofits working on housing and food insecurity.
AI readiness & governance
A read of where AI already is in your workflows, including the parts nobody wrote down, and what a defensible governance baseline looks like at your actual size.
What this is notIt is not an accreditation and I don't issue one. I don't take fractional-executive roles, and I don't build or run your systems.
Facilitation
Convenings and working sessions where the goal is a decision rather than alignment. I'm most useful in rooms where several organizations have to give something up, and least useful as a keynote.
Honest limitIt's one person with a hard time ceiling. Network-health reads run through Collective Impact Labs, not this practice: see the partner sheet.
How engagements usually run
A working session. Half a day on one specific question, with something written at the end. Good when you want to test whether I'm useful before committing to anything, and often the only thing needed.
A diagnostic. Two to four weeks, fixed scope and fixed fee, ending in a written read and a conversation about it. This is the most common shape.
An advisory arrangement. A standing relationship with a defined time ceiling and a fixed term, renewed deliberately rather than by default. Never open-ended.
Fees depend on scope and on whether you're a funded institution or a two-person nonprofit. I hold a lower rate for mission organizations and I don't make people ask for it twice. Tell me what you're working on and I'll quote it plainly.
- Fractional executive roles
- Grant writing for hire
- Fiscal sponsorship
- Investment advice
- Brokering capital, or anything that would make me a finder
- Building or operating your systems
- Anything that touches the personal data of the people you serve
If what you need is one of these, say so and I'll point you at someone better placed. That's usually a faster answer than a proposal.
How this starts
Write to me with two paragraphs on the problem: what is happening, and what you want to be different. I answer within 72 hours with a yes or a no and a date. No calendar widget, no form, no discovery sequence.
If it's a no, I'll say why, and where I'd send you instead.
Send the two paragraphsjohnfrkim@gmail.com