I build the operational backbone that lets nonprofits scale with confidence. Senior operations leadership, part time, without the six figure overhead.
Grow the mission. Protect the organization. Give the leader room to lead.
“Your mission deserves operations that can carry it. I build the systems, scale the programs, and put the infrastructure in place so your team can stop surviving and start leading.
Protect the funding. Build compliance that holds when a reviewer walks in unannounced.
Build systems that let programs grow without breaking the people running them.
Build ownership and leadership capacity so the organization does not depend on one person.
Growth, compliance, staff capacity, governance, and crisis readiness are all real problems. They are not the point. The point is what fixing them gives you.
Programs can expand without operational chaos.
The replication model, the launch playbook, the SOPs, and the reporting a lean team can run without you in the room. What worked at three sites keeps working at fifteen.
Funding, compliance, reputation, and resilience are not left to chance.
CACFP, SFSP, and federal review readiness built into how the work runs, not bolted on after the finding letter arrives. Board reporting your directors can actually read.
The Executive Director does not have to be the person holding every operational detail together.
Ownership assigned by name. Decisions made at the level they belong. Knowledge written down instead of living in one head. You get your calendar back for the work only you can do.
Every leader I talk to already knows something is off. The question nobody asks out loud is what another year of it costs. These are not hypotheticals. They are the four ways I have watched it land.
A federal finding does not stop at a correction letter. It can claw back reimbursement you have already spent, put you on a corrective action plan, and follow you into the next review cycle. The money is gone before the appeal is written.
The site you meant to open in March opens in September, or not at all. Every month it sits is a month of families your program did not reach and a grant report you have to explain to the funder who paid for it.
Your best program director leaves. What she knew was never written down, so the next hire spends six months rebuilding what already existed. Your board hears about it as a hiring problem. It was a systems problem.
You spend another year as the operations manager of your own organization. Strategy, funder relationships, board development, succession. All of it waits, and none of it waits quietly.
If your nonprofit stops when you take a vacation, you do not have a system. You have a dependency.
None of it shows up as a line item. All of it shows up in the year.
Book a Call Or start with the Operations Audit →The numbers below come from building and running real programs at organizations like North Texas Food Bank, San Antonio Food Bank, and Crossroads Community Services.
Wendling Nonprofit Consulting provides fractional COO services to human services and food security nonprofits with budgets between $1M and $10M. Founder Bradley Wendling is a nonprofit operations leader with 25 years of experience in food security, federal compliance, and disaster response. The work is built on human services and food security operations, and the same systems hold in any nonprofit carrying programs at that size. Engagements start at $3,000 per month. Based in Houston, Texas, serving organizations nationwide.
Two engagements, two different problems, one approach: build the backbone, then let the results follow.
The Operations Audit is a fixed price, two week review of your growth systems, your federal compliance, your staff capacity, your board reporting, and your crisis readiness. You end up with every risk you carry written down, rated by severity, and sequenced into a 90 day fix plan with a name on every line. No retainer required. Run the plan yourself if you want to.
Intake and interviews. Your documents, and thirty minutes each with up to five of the people who run the work.
Findings and sequencing. Every risk rated by severity and by the cost of doing nothing, then put in the order it should be fixed.
Handoff. Sixty minutes to walk the findings and the plan. Board chair welcome. Then the documents are yours.
Twenty five years of operational lessons, built into repeatable frameworks. Start free, and add the deeper toolkits when you are ready to go further.
The SOP Starter and the Program Scaling Checklist. Build the backbone that lets your programs grow without breaking.
Free FrameworksThe Compliance Risk Radar and the Board Reporting Template. See the gaps before an auditor or a board member does.
Free FrameworksThe Staff Capacity Matrix, the New ED Survival Guide, and the Role Design Builder. Build a team and a structure that hold when people move on.
Free FrameworksNeed to solve a specific problem now? The premium toolkits go deeper: CACFP Compliance, Disaster Response, Grant Readiness, and AI Integration, ready to put to work the same day.
Browse Resources →Thirty minutes. We find what is breaking and what to do about it. No pitch, no pressure, just an honest conversation.
Book a Call30 minutes · No obligation · Houston and remote engagements welcome
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