Maximize Your
Organization’s Effectiveness
Board Development and Training
Is your board grappling with its roles and responsibilities when it comes to governance? Is it difficult to navigate board composition, to orient new and established board members, to plan strategic meetings, or more?
Whether your board is a long-established board, just getting started, or needs to fine-tune its workings, Simansky Consulting can help your board reach its maximum level of performance by offering coaching, training, and workshops for your board and board members.
Coaching: Board Chairs, Executive Directors, Senior Professional Leadership
Whether you’re a new Board President/Chair or a seasoned leader, Simansky Consulting offers expert support to help you lead with confidence, govern effectively, and navigate challenging moments for your board and organization.
For new Executive Directors, we provide guidance to help you transition smoothly into your leadership role. This includes understanding nonprofit governance, managing lay–professional relationships, clarifying the Executive Director’s role in board engagement, and aligning with organizational strategy and mission.
For senior professionals, Simansky Consulting offers tailored coaching in areas such as, strengthening time management skills, expanding capacity in staff supervision and team leadership, enhancing delegation and communication strategies.
Meeting and Retreat Facilitation
Is your organization planning a retreat for its board or staff? Does your organization need an external voice to assist in planning and/or facilitating a challenging or complex discussion? Uniquely equipped with the expertise and skills to plan and lead engaging and productive meetings and retreats, Simansky Consulting will ensure that your meeting or retreat is focused, generative, and energizing.
Strategic Planning
Is your organization interested in embarking on a strategic planning process for the first time? Does your organization have a strategic plan that needs to be updated?
Simansky Consulting can design and facilitate a strategic planning process to meet your organization’s needs that takes into consideration budget, timing, and organizational landscape.
Executive Director Search Process
Embarking on a search for an Executive Director? Whether this transition is part of a long-term plan or unexpected, the search and transition process can be challenging, demanding, and also ripe with opportunities.
Simansky Consulting can assist your organization in the Executive Director search process, including forming and effectively managing a search committee toward a successful outcome.
For some “food for thought” check out Linda’s article about transition planning.
Program Evaluation
Wondering about the effectiveness of a particular program or service? Is a donor requesting an evaluation of the program they funded? Does your board ask about the impact a program or service is having?
Working in partnership with your organization, Simansky Consulting will craft an evaluation process that that meets your organization’s unique learning goals.
Needs Assessment
Is your organization effectively meeting the needs of its target population? Do your constituents consider your organization’s program or service to be valuable? Are there other services that would be more beneficial?
Using tools like interviews, surveys, focus groups, and more, Simansky Consulting will help you determine answers to these questions.
Focus Group Leadership
Is there an issue that your organization aspires to understand at a deeper level? Are you sponsoring initiatives and need an outsider to ascertain qualitative information about users or target groups’ thoughts, experiences, and feedback?
Simansky Consulting specializes in creating and leading focus groups and then synthesizing the information so that is presented in a user-friendly format.
Want a few pointers on running an effective focus group? – check out Linda’s article.
Meet Linda
Linda Simansky is a skilled listener. She has a reputation for knowing how to ask the right questions and synthesizing key information that helps her clients achieve their goals. For over two decades, Linda has devoted her professional and personal life to the nonprofit sector. Her diverse group of clients range from small direct service organizations to large community-wide institutions. Linda’s practice focuses on Board Development, training, Board President/Chair coaching, meeting/retreat planning and facilitation, strategic planning, Executive Director search, program evaluation, needs assessments, and focus-group design and leadership.
Linda’s clients appreciate her ability to quickly understand their organizations’ nuances and challenges. She is known for utilizing these insights to empower her clients with the resources to actualize their ultimate objectives.
Previously, Linda worked for the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) from its inception in 1997 until the fall of 2011. During her tenure, she served as the Senior Program Manager for PEJE’s nation-wide grant programs. The grant programs were designed to address a variety of institutional needs including starting new schools, growing enrollment, transitioning new heads-of-school, and shepherding institutions through whole-school change and capacity-building processes. Linda’s also managed PEJE’s governance, staffed PEJE’s first major strategic planning process, established regional board development programs for day schools across North America, and facilitated PEJE’s Admission Community of Practice (CoP). In 2011, Linda launched Simansky Consulting.
Linda holds an MSW from the University of Maryland School of Social Work, an MA in Jewish Studies from Baltimore Hebrew University, and a certificate in Jewish Communal Work from the Baltimore Institute for Jewish Communal Service.
Linda has held many volunteer leadership roles in the greater Boston community. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband and three children.
Linda’s practice focuses on Board Development, training, Coaching: Board President/Chair, Executive Directors, and Senior Professionals.
Writings
Planning a Vision-Driven Bar Mitzvah
A story of a special bar mitzvah, informed by two decades of work in the non-profit sector, that resulted in a whole lot of naches.
College Basketball and Me: A Love Story
I love college basketball! I grew up in North Carolina where the term “Carolina Blue” is ubiquitous in describing what is otherwise known as “baby
Focusing on Focus Groups
A focus group should be an easy home run, right? After all, most people love to share their opinions. And with thoughtful planning combined with
Getting Back on Track Organizationally: Take Care of That Deferred Maintenance!
First and foremost, this article is an excellent reminder that we should all be taking care of ourselves and attending to our health. It also
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
How many of you have seen the Staples commercial where parents are singing the ubiquitous holiday song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the year”?
Planning a Vision-Driven Bar Mitzvah
A story of a special bar mitzvah, informed by two decades of work in the non-profit sector, that resulted in a whole lot of naches.
College Basketball and Me: A Love Story
I love college basketball! I grew up in North Carolina where the term “Carolina Blue” is ubiquitous in describing what is otherwise known as “baby
Focusing on Focus Groups
A focus group should be an easy home run, right? After all, most people love to share their opinions. And with thoughtful planning combined with
Getting Back on Track Organizationally: Take Care of That Deferred Maintenance!
First and foremost, this article is an excellent reminder that we should all be taking care of ourselves and attending to our health. It also
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
How many of you have seen the Staples commercial where parents are singing the ubiquitous holiday song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the year”?
Clients
