It began with a simple idea...

...and now supports the success of thousands of nonprofit professionals nationwide.

It's a simple idea, really: Good people make good things happen, and deserve good support in doing so.

The Nonprofit Help Center story isn't your typical hero's journey. Rather, our team typically plays more of the role of "guide," as we work alongside nonprofit teams in building their capacity through our innovative and simple online learning solution. And in this way, we help a lot of good people* get a lot of good support.

*4,000 and counting, in nearly 100 nonprofits!

2018-19

Leveraging a Love for the Sector

Back in 2018, Emilie and Alex were working together at a local community-building organization that not only ran its own programs but also supported a network of about a dozen regional nonprofits in funding, training, advocacy, and local organization. As the executive director, Emilie had spent the past 3 years stabilizing the organization both financially and reputationally, and Alex lent her talents in building up a stable of young families to get involved through innovative grant-funded programs.

Emilie founded the Nonprofit Help Center that year, with the intent of leveraging her nearly two decades of nonprofit leadership experience and doctoral research surrounding community leadership behaviors and the psychological levers around donor behavior to help other nonprofits excel. What began as a small side gig quickly grew into a full-fledged operation, with the Nonprofit Help Center engaging with numerous nonprofits on targeted, fractional consulting engagements.

2020

Focusing on Capacity Assessment

In 2020, the Nonprofit Help Center narrowed its focus from consulting with nonprofits on a variety of projects to focusing solely on capacity assessment and capacity building. Alex formally joined the team and the Impact Capacity Assessment Tool was adopted as the sole means of measuring and assessing client capacity.

With big changes happening across the nation, the small team began hearing from clients on their unique--and universal--points of pain.

In the conversation surrounding each nonprofit's capacity, the question that kept coming up was "Ok, so now what?"

2021

"So now what?"

Nonprofit Help Center clients rallied around the idea that they helped shape: they needed a solution to help every team member build nonprofit capacity in a way that would be time- and budget-sensitive.

The NHC team set about expanding its work to develop what would become the first-of-its-kind online learning platform just for nonprofit professionals. With their nonprofit experience in mind, the NHC team realized that they would develop this nonprofit training experience with the guiding principle that "everyone deserves equitable access to quality professional development."

2022

Building Capacity, Building Culture

With the Merit Nonprofit Professional Development online learning platform live and enrolling teams, the NHC team welcomed Claire to the team. Something great started to happen: we watched our learner count grow to 2,000, and we watched the culture within our client organizations become stronger and more capacity-focused.

Merit continued to expand in its features, and the NHC team welcomed individual nonprofit teams of 5 to 500+ employees, plus statewide coalitions, associations, nonprofit consultants, and even a software integration.

2023

Expanding to Further Support our Learners and Leaders

The NHC team continues to grow with the addition of Morgan, and the year ahead is full of excitement! Our team will continue to build out new features within the Merit platform, work with a small group of nonprofit teams and leaders directly, and will be launching a certificate program as well as a book, plus and other exciting developments, during the year!