Explore every episode of the podcast Fracture

Something is shifting in the nonprofit sector - and fractional is more than a buzzword. This is Fracture. The podcast about the business of nonprofit fractional consulting - for consultants, and the people who are about to become one.

Molly Terbovich-Ridenhour spent 15+ years in nonprofit arts organisations holding all the pieces - creative, human, operational, financial. When she left, she didn't just change jobs. She redesigned how she leads.

In this episode, she's honest about what she learned the hard way: the skills that made her excellent in-house become a trap in consulting if you don't actively work against them.

Key Takeaways

• The overfunctioning pattern from nonprofit leadership follows you into consulting unless you name it and actively work against it
• Boundaries are a practice, not a policy - especially for people who said they had them but didn't hold them
• Structure your calendar before other people fill it - time is the most important boundary of all
• The story you're telling yourself about client urgency is usually wrong - clients have more patience than you think
• Organisations often ask for X but actually need Y - naming that clearly is part of your job as a fractional consultant

Guest Bio

Molly Terbovich-Ridenhour is a fractional consultant with 15+ years in nonprofit arts leadership. She runs AMR, supporting small and mid-sized nonprofits through strategy, fundraising, and organisational complexity, from San Diego, California.

Resources + Links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/molly-terbovich-ridenhour/
• https://nonprofitfractionals.com/

Connect with Molly

Website: mollyterbovich.com | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/molly-terbovich-ridenhour

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Fracture is for nonprofit professionals who refuse to choose between doing good work and having a good life. Hosted by Cindy Wagman, founder of the Nonprofit Fractionals Network, it's real talk on building a fractional consulting business that actually pays - and still matters.

Subscribe: https://www.nonprofitfractionals.com/subscribe | Join the OS: https://www.nonprofitfractionals.com/os-join

This is Episode 1 of Fracture - and it's the one most listeners will wish they found years ago.

Fracture ran as a private podcast for a while. If you've been in the NFN community, you know it. Real conversations about building a fractional consulting business in the nonprofit sector, behind a door most people didn't know existed. Now the door is open.

In this episode, Cindy names the thing she sees keeping more nonprofit professionals stuck than anything else: the belief that impact and income are opposites. That if your work matters, you earn less. That the earning less is proof you care. She traces where that belief came from, why it's not a sector value - it's a deal that runs in one direction - and what happens when you stop accepting it.

This isn't a tips episode. It's a reframe. For anyone who's been excellent at nonprofit work while watching the system extract everything in exchange for barely enough - this one lands somewhere real.

Cindy also tells her own story: a women's shelter where she was the first and only fundraiser, watching board members suggest coin boxes at liquor stores and holiday card sales while she tried to run a real development program. A first consulting contract in 2015 that paid more than her in-house salary, alone. Building what eventually became the Nonprofit Fractionals Network - now 100+ people trained to run their own fractional practices.

Fractional consulting isn't freelancing. It's a model that lets you keep everything that brought you to the sector - the relationships, the work, the proximity to mission - and build a business that pays you what you're actually worth, and gives you back your time.

• The real reason nonprofit compensation is low (and why calling it mission alignment is a cover story)
• What fractional consulting is, in plain language, and why it's not freelancing
• How Cindy went from in-house fundraiser to NFN founder and what that path actually looked like
• The "both and" philosophy behind Fracture - impact + income, not impact or income
• What to expect from the show going forward

• Nonprofit Fractionals Network
• NFN OS Program
• Subscribe to Fracture + weekly email: nonprofitfractionals.com/subscribe

Fracture is for nonprofit professionals who refuse to choose between doing good work and having a good life. Hosted by Cindy Wagman, founder of the Nonprofit Fractionals Network, it's real talk on building a fractional consulting business that actually pays - and still matters.

Subscribe to Fracture | Join the OS

Tanya Frey spent 21 years in employment law before founding Terra Firma Consulting LLC - a firm that helps nonprofits recruit, retain, and make the hard calls on people. She now works across executive search, HR strategy, and the fractional model, placing fractional executives into nonprofits while also advising them.

That position on both sides of the table makes her a useful witness. She's seen organisations that think they want fractional but really want a discount full-time hire. Candidates who claim the title but can't articulate what they actually do. This episode covers when to pitch fractional, how to spot red flags on both sides, and why your references should work like referrals.

Key Takeaways

• Don't apply for a full-time posting and ask them to consider you fractionally. The appetite has to exist before the conversation, not during it.
• If you can't describe your practice area and what your first two weeks look like at a new client, you're not ready to call yourself a fractional executive.
• Three to four anchor clients is a sustainable load. Seven or eight is a signal you're not working at the right level.
• Treat references as evergreen relationships. Ask upfront: "Would you serve as a testimonial and refer me to peers?" They become champions, not checkboxes.
• The rate cap conversation tells you everything. An organisation that won't pay more than $X for fractional executive services wants a discount employee, not a business partner.

Guest Bio

Tanya Frey, J.D. is Founder and CEO of Terra Firma Consulting LLC in Memphis, Tennessee. With 21 years of employment law experience rooted in the nonprofit sector, she helps organisations make the calls nobody else wants to touch - from executive hiring to leadership transitions. She also hosts The Reset, a podcast about leading organisations built on people.

Resources + Links

• Terra Firma Consulting: https://terrafirmallc.com/
• Tanya on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanyacfrey
• The Reset Podcast: Search "The Reset" by Tanya Frey on Spotify

Connect with Tanya

https://terrafirmallc.com/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanyacfrey

Fracture is for nonprofit professionals who refuse to choose between doing good work and having a good life. Hosted by Cindy Wagman, founder of the Nonprofit Fractionals Network, it's real talk on building a fractional consulting business that actually pays - and still matters.

Subscribe: https://www.nonprofitfractionals.com/subscribe | Join the OS: https://www.nonprofitfractionals.com/os-join

Tanya Wall joined the Nonprofit Fractionals Network not really knowing what came next. She'd spent her entire career in nonprofits - on the direct service side, leading small organizations, and building fundraising programs - and she was at a crossroads. Then she heard the term "fractional fundraising" and spent the next few days listening to every episode she could find. By the end, she knew exactly what she wanted to do.

What she didn't expect was how fast it would happen. Within 30 days of joining NFN, she had her first client. Within a few months, she was fully booked. And within her first year, she had a team.

Tanya and Cindy talk about what it takes to grow a fractional consulting practice beyond just yourself - the mindset work, the structural decisions, the fear of niching, and the kind of business culture Tanya is building. If you're curious what it looks like to scale a fractional practice without recreating the nonprofit grind, this episode is for you.

• Getting to fully booked can happen faster than you think - but you need to decide in advance what comes next
• Bringing on subcontractors or account managers requires more intentional structure than most consultants plan for
• Niching feels scary because it means saying no to work that doesn't fit - but it positions you as the expert your ideal clients are looking for
• The hustle mindset from in-house nonprofit work doesn't have to follow you into consulting
• Documenting systems, onboarding well, and respecting each team member's working style is what separates a real team from a pile of contractors
• Clear geographic and service niching can generate better-fit inquiries faster than casting a wide net

Tanya Wall, CFRE, is the founder and principal consultant of Collaborative Cause Consulting, based in Nova Scotia. With over 20 years of nonprofit fundraising experience, she specializes in individual giving programs and fractional fundraising leadership for small nonprofits in Atlantic Canada. She and her team work with organizations across the country, with a growing focus on the East Coast.

• Collaborative Cause Consulting
• Motion Project Manager
• Nonprofit Fractionals Network

• Website: collaborativecause.ca
• LinkedIn: Tanya Wall, CFRE

Fracture is the podcast for nonprofit professionals who are done with the self-sacrific. Hosted by Cindy Wagman, founder of the Nonprofit Fractionals Network, each episode delivers real talk on building a fractional consulting business that actually works.

Join the Nonprofit Fractional Operating System

Kayla Meyers built Bridgepoint Evaluation around one insight: her expertise didn't need 40 hours a week. After going in-house to build a nonprofit evaluation system from scratch, she turned that role into her first fractional client.

This episode covers how fractional evaluation works month-to-month, how she pitched the transition to her employer, and how to position evaluation as strategy rather than compliance.

• Fractional consulting works in specialised fields - the model applies wherever organisations need senior expertise without a full-time hire
• Turning an in-house role into your first fractional client is possible - frame it around what's best for the organisation
• The cost of a person is different from their salary - framing pricing that way creates a genuine win-win
• When you do good fractional work, the ED stops thinking about your function - so you have to proactively communicate your value
• One-time evaluation projects can convert to ongoing fractional clients when clients experience what an evaluative learning culture feels like

Kayla Meyers is the founder of Bridgepoint Evaluation in Minneapolis, providing fractional evaluation management, coaching, and impact reporting to nonprofits. She teaches program evaluation at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

• bridgepointevaluation.com
• linkedin.com/in/bridgepointkayla
• https://buildingbettertogether.co/ [URL to confirm]
• consultants4good.com
• eval.org
• Minnesota Evaluation Association [URL to confirm]
• Rising Tide Society [URL to confirm]
• Strengthen the Strong [URL to confirm]

Website | LinkedIn

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Fracture is for nonprofit professionals who refuse to choose between doing good work and having a good life. Hosted by Cindy Wagman, founder of the Nonprofit Fractionals Network, it's real talk on building a fractional consulting business that actually pays - and still matters.

Subscribe to Fracture | Join the OS