Mission Maven

10/09/2026

What if we stopped chasing money and started chasing the mission?
I recently had the chance to hear Robert Egger speak at an event hosted by South Sound Partners for Philanthropy, and I walked out feeling like someone had finally put my thoughts into words. For years, I have been standing in front of community groups asking a version of the same question. Egger asked it better than I ever have, and I want to share what stuck with me. Read more in comments.

I recently had the chance to hear Robert Egger speak at an event hosted by South Sound Partners for Philanthropy, and I walked out feeling like someone had finally put my thoughts into words.

10/06/2026

Did you know you can vote for me everyday?? Go check out my entry and share it with every woman you know: https://tophost.org/2026/trudy-soucoup 💛 and vote for ME!! Men can vote too in solidarity!

Will Trudy Soucoup be a guest on an episode of On Air with Ryan Seacrest, win $25,000, and lead a podcast produced by iHeartRadio?

10/05/2026

Big news, Maven community. I entered the Top Host competition, and the prize is $25,000, a professionally produced six-episode podcast with iHeartMedia, and a guest spot on "On Air with Ryan Seacrest."

My entry is In Support of Wise Women, a Your Mission Maven Podcast. It's a space for women in a work/life transition, whether you're re-entering the workforce, pivoting careers, or job hunting after a layoff. You've got decades of experience and a market that keeps acting like it expired. Honestly, you don't need more sympathy. You need support, empathy, and a place to pass along the wisdom you earned the hard way.

Missions change. Mine is making sure yours is still heard.

If this sounds like you, or like a woman you love, take a look at my entry and share it with her: https://tophost.org/2026/trudy-soucoup Men can vote too in solidarity!

Will Trudy Soucoup be a guest on an episode of On Air with Ryan Seacrest, win $25,000, and lead a podcast produced by iHeartRadio?

10/04/2026

I love a good governance mantra. "Nose in, fingers out" is one of the best ones out there, and it comes straight from a recent CLA and BoardSource webinar on board governance. As CLA's Amanda Campbell put it during the session, the idea is to keep your nose in the data to provide strategic oversight, while keeping your fingers out of day-to-day operations (BoardSource, 2026). It is a tidy image. It fits on a slide. It is also, in my experience, one of the hardest lines for a nonprofit board to actually hold. Read More link in comments

09/26/2026

The Wisdom We Used to Trust: What's Happening to Women of a Certain Age in the Nonprofit and For-Profit Sectors
Highly qualified women — women with decades of programmatic expertise, government relations experience, grant compliance knowledge, community trust built over careers — are having a genuinely hard time finding work. Meanwhile, boards and hiring committees keep landing, again and again, on men. Often younger men. Sometimes just less experienced men. It's not that every single hire is evidence of bias — it rarely works that way, one decision at a time. But the pattern, when you step back and look at it across a sector, is hard to unsee. Read More in Comments

09/19/2026

When an organization falls apart — whether from a board that lost its grip on governance, or an executive who ran the place into the ground, or some tangled combination of both — what do we actually owe each other? Link to full post in comments.

06/18/2026

Change management is one of my areas of focus. Did you know that 70% of organizational change efforts fail. Let that sink in for a second.
If you're a nonprofit leader, you already know change isn't optional — funding shifts, staff turnover, strategic pivots, the next crisis nobody saw coming. The question isn't whether change is coming. It's whether you're set up to lead through it instead of just surviving it.
In one of my earlier blog posts, I dig into why change is so hard on mission-driven teams (hint: it's not about the logistics, it's about the people), and walk through five pillars that actually move the needle — starting with something most leaders skip entirely: doing the work before you announce anything.
If you've ever rolled out a change and watched it stall, or you're bracing for one now, this one's for you. 👇https://www.yourmissionmaven.com/post/how-to-make-the-most-out-of-change

Send a message to learn more

05/25/2026

Why Nonprofit Leaders Struggle to Retire — and How to Leave When It's Time
Sometimes founders and long-tenured leaders want to stay for the wrong reasons: they don't know what to do next, they haven't planned for their retirement, their identity is with the organization, or they don't think the organization can survive without them. Read more link in comments

05/23/2026

Going to miss Mr. Colbert for sure. This is one of his thoughts that I hope will stick with me.

05/22/2026

How do you handle this? People intimidated by your powerful existence.