What is a Fractional Chief Impact Officer?

If leading a nonprofit or social enterprise feels like constantly putting out fires, you are far from alone. The stakes are high—your team is passionate, your mission matters, and the expectations from board, funders, and partners keep stacking up. But with shrinking budgets, ambitious goals, and even layoffs or funding cuts on the rise, small teams are being asked to do more than ever.

It’s easy to feel stretched thin, wishing for expert support but knowing a full-time executive just isn’t feasible right now.

Here’s the hopeful pivot—your organization doesn’t have to settle for staying overwhelmed. Imagine what’s possible if, instead of constantly juggling, you finally had clarity, credible strategy, and the bandwidth to deliver measurable results.

That’s where the Fractional Chief Impact Officer comes in—a flexible, approachable, and proven way to amplify your impact, even when resources and time are tight.

What Does “Fractional” Mean?

Executive Leadership, On Terms That Fit YOU

The concept of “fractional” leadership is about bringing in experienced executives—like a Chief Impact Officer—on a part-time, hourly, or project basis.

This approach allows growing organizations to access high-level strategy and support, without the weight, risk, or commitment of a full-time hire. Engagements may range from a few hours each week to time-bound projects focused on solving specific challenges, like launching a new reporting system or securing B Corp certification.

Other terms you may have heard for this model include:

• Interim executive

• Part-time executive

• Embedded advisor

• Contract leadership

While “fractional” is most current, outdated terms like “advisor” (or sadly even “board member”) usually point to roles with less influence—fractional leaders are integrated and accountable, not just giving advice now and again. And while freelancers typically tackle tasks or deliverables from the sidelines, fractional executives join leadership, shape direction, and guide implementation hand-in-hand with your team.

Why Choose Fractional CHIEF IMPACT OFFICER Services?

When resources are limited but the need for credible, strategic leadership is pressing, fractional services stand out because they are:

• Project-based or hourly: Customized to capacity.

• Scalable: Flexible engagement, ramping up or down as priorities shift.

• Mission-aligned: Tailored to the organization’s culture, growth stage, and values.

• Quickly actionable: Expert guidance starts fast, and adapts as you learn.

a Chief Impact Officer: Where Mission Meets Measurable Results

A Chief Impact Officer (CIO) is more than a champion for your purpose—they’re the architect of your mission’s outcomes. This role ensures your work leads to proven, communicable social and environmental results, empowering every department to pull in the same direction.

In practical terms, CIOs:

• Set strategy for measurable, sustainable impact

• Align staff, systems, and stories with your biggest goals

• Lead the design and implementation of evaluation tools

• Build trust by making impact data visible and honest

From Vision to Data—And Beyond

Fractional CIOs work alongside your leadership, filling gaps and tackling the priorities that matter most in your context.

Popular Fractional CHIEF IMPACT OFFICER Projects

• Impact Reporting: Create “stakeholder-ready” reports, translating mission work into clear, funder-friendly results and narratives.

• Strategy Design: Develop frameworks for social/environmental impact, identifying short- and long-term markers of success.

• Stakeholder Engagement: Build or refine outreach and transparency tools to boost credibility and support.

• Organizational Alignment: Make sure goals, departments, and programs work together, not in silos.

• Funding Support: Strengthen proposals with transparent data, helping you win more grants and opportunities.

• Measurement and Evaluation: Pinpoint which data is meaningful, make it easier to collect, and free your team from endless spreadsheets.

• Impact Storytelling: Convert numbers into compelling, jargon-free stories your community and partners care about.

• ESG and Sustainability Integration: Weave social/environmental impact throughout your business model, supporting certifications like B Corp.

• Capacity Coaching: Guide staff in strategic, sustainable thinking, building a stronger, impact-literate culture.

Projects may be structured hourly, by retainer, or as one-time strategy sprints—so support meets your needs, not the other way around.

Why Now? Small Teams Are Asked to Do More

The last few years have made one thing clear: Nonprofits and social enterprises face ever-growing expectations with fewer resources each quarter. Layoffs, budget cuts, and evolving goals mean organizations are relying on small, agile teams—and those teams are pressed to deliver transparency, results, and growth without burning out.

That’s exactly why Fractional Chief Impact Officers matter now. They offer hands-on partnership in systems, data, and culture—so your staff is set up to succeed, your mission gets the attention it deserves, and your community can see real change.

Who Needs a Fractional Chief Impact Officer?

Fractional leadership is perfect for:

• Small teams with powerful missions trying to scale without overextending staff

• Founders and EDs juggling strategy, reporting, and daily operations

• Social enterprises and nonprofits pursuing grants, certifications, or impact recognition

• Boards recognizing that their impact story is scattered and unclear

If measuring, reporting, or scaling impact are real challenges—or if your staff is burning out covering too many bases—fractional leadership is a great option for you.

The Benefits of Fractional Impact Leadership

Immediate Value, Ongoing Flexibility

With fractional CIO services, mission-driven organizations receive:

• Targeted expertise right when it’s needed: No complex hiring processes or long-term contracts

• External perspective with insider accountability: Best practices and fresh ideas, without disrupting culture

• Strategic clarity that reduces overwhelm—systems, frameworks, and alignment so every hour is well spent

• Personalized guidance: Support is tailored to your goals, whether helping with a report deadline, capacity building, or stakeholder communication

How It Works: Your Fractional CIO in Action

A typical engagement with me unfolds like this:

• Discovery: Free 30-minute consult to get to know your challenges, goals, and context. This also allows us to make sure we’re a good fit for each other.

• Proposal and Planning: Right-sized project or strategic retainer mapped around needs and capacity.

  Then, depending on the project, it may include:

• Systems and Reporting Build: Design measurement tools, streamline data collection, and turn insights into usable, actionable knowledge.

• Frameworks and Coaching: From impact strategy to storytelling tools, every solution is co-created for your top priorities.

• Ongoing Leadership: Regular check-ins, accountability, and continuous improvement—on your terms, in your preferred mode (remote, onsite, hybrid).

Everything is collaborative, transparent, and tailored. As your partner, I am your executive extension, leveling up—not overwhelming—your mission.

How Can a Fractional Chief Impact Officer Help You?

If reporting deadlines cause stress, strategic priorities seem endlessly shifting, or the weight of demonstrating impact is slowing your mission’s growth, fractional CIO services can clear the fog.

Choose from hourly, project, or recurring support, and get help that lifts you—never overburdens.

• Measure progress in ways that motivate and inspire

• Communicate outcomes that build trust

• Coach teams for lasting, positive change

• Move from “overwhelmed” to “outcomes” with help that fits you

Next Steps: Ready to Transform Your Impact?

Your mission deserves to be seen, measured, and celebrated. All it takes is a willing partner, proven systems, and a commitment to clarity—so your impact can speak for itself.

Ready to discover if fractional leadership is right for you? Book a free consult and move from scattered effort to strategic growth—no pressure, just possibilities.

There’s never been a better time to get the help you need—on your terms, so everyone in your organization can do good, even better.

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I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations move from scattered efforts to strategic growth. As your Fractional Chief Impact Officer, I’m here to help you measure what matters, communicate results, and maximize your mission—all on your terms and budget. When you go from overwhelm to outcomes, you can do good even better.

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Your Budget: Go From Cursing to Championing

One of the reasons I love inviting guests to post on this blog is so that they can talk about topics that I probably wouldn’t address myself. And right at the top of that list is budgets! Numbers are something I always struggled with in school (while I excelled in English), so it’s better for both of us that I stick to what I’m good at.

Enter Steve Fredlund. He and I met several months ago in a Facebook Group, and when I saw that one of his areas of focus was budgeting and money management for nonprofits and small businesses, I jumped at the chance to feature his expertise.

I really loved the way Steve talks about “transformational” budgeting in this post, and think it will not only shed some light, but challenge your social impact organization to value money differently in the process.

BUDGET. A 6-letter swear word to many nonprofit leaders and small business owners. It’s about penny-pinching and the restricting of ability to get things done. It’s the mechanism by which a number-crunching, introverted analytic hinders team creativity. Right? 

Yes. Because most of us see it this way, this is precisely what it becomes. Consider how budget discussions and approval are communicated in your organization. For many, it sounds something like, “Well, it’s that exciting time to set the budget again,” or “Sorry, guys and gals, we have to work on the budget,” or “Let’s get the budget stuff done so we can get on to the real stuff we need to talk about.” 

Why You Need to Rethink Budgets

Budget communication both reflects AND creates culture. It gives insight into leadership perspectives on budget, which gives insight into how leaders think about budgeting as a potential tool to move the organization forward. And usually, budget communication is extremely negative or, at minimum, apathetic. But your cash flow is an asset and it is your responsibility to leverage that asset as effectively as possible in support of the overall mission and strategic priorities of your organization. Anything short of that is a suboptimal use of one of your biggest assets, and is a gap in your overall leadership. 

Your finances carry vast amounts of potential energy, just waiting to get released. Your job as a leader is to recognize the full potential energy and release it to maximize achievement of the vision and strategic priorities. I want to encourage you to shift your paradigm about finances—to recognize that great organizations are able to fully release their power and leverage it for success.

3 Budgeting Exercises for Social Impact Organizations

Here are three things you can do to increase the value of your budgeting process, while also changing your perspective about the role of finances in your nonprofit or social enterprise:

1. Strategy-based budget.  List out all of your major strategies, goals, or initiatives. Then assign each a percentage (totaling 100%) indicating how you WISH all of your available funds were allocated. Do this without regard to your knowledge of the current budget and only consider non-fixed costs. Basically, you are saying, “This is how I wish all of our discretionary spending was allocated.” Then, take this to your finance team and ask them to complete this exercise with the actual spending; have them include a bucket somewhere for the “fixed costs,” and with all remaining expenses, have them allocate out to the same categories you defined. Compare what you find. Eventually, I encourage organizations to create budgets starting first with developing a desired allocation of resources and then building the budget; but for now, this exercise will provide insight into any major disjoints in spending. It will also help you realize how many of your expenses are fixed, to see if there is any way to move spending into discretionary.

2. Gain outsider perspectives.  An interesting exercise is to give your current budget (or actual spending) to several people unfamiliar with your organization and ask them what they think your vision and priorities based on your budget. You can get tremendous insight from this exercise. This is similar to having new people to come into your building or office and ask what they think your priorities are based on your environment; it creates fascinating discussions.

3. External research. It’s amazing to me that very few nonprofits and social enterprises have an understanding of how similar organizations are allocating their budgets. I ask, “How does this compare to your competitors?” or “How does this compare to similar nonprofits?” and rarely do they know. Comparing to others can provide great insights, not only for competitive advantage, but to start the conversations about how you could become more effective in your spending.

 There are many more considerations in maximizing your financial investments, and improving the perception of the role of budgeting, but these three are a good start. How you spend your money is more than just a necessary evil. It is as important as the staff you hire, connections you make, and products or services you provide. Every dollar of your revenue is an asset; are you investing it in a way that maximizes your impact or helps you best reach your goals?

Avoid the 5% Rule

When the next budget cycle comes up, consider avoiding the typical process that simply adds 5% to every budget item from last year. This is the central mistake in budgeting for impact; to start with what has been done in the past and making minor tweaks. Using the prior budget to determine the next budget is akin to starting with current policies and procedures to set next year’s strategies.

If you want a transformational budget, then realize that the budget is an “output” and not an “input.”  The budget process starts with what you are ultimately trying to do (your vision, mission, or purpose). From there, you determine your key focus areas for the next one to three years, which leads to your key strategies and, ultimately, to the execution of those strategies. It is from these decisions that the transformational budget emerges. 

Imagine running a nonprofit helping to alleviate the issue of clean water in which 20% of last year’s budget supported efforts in Rwanda and 10% supported Nepal. There are some significant political and world relief changes resulting in far less need for the organization to continue working in Rwanda. Strategically, the organization decides it needs to move staff and facilities to Nepal, but the budget setting is based on last year and the funding to both Rwanda and Nepal is increased slightly, creating a huge disjoint in strategy and funding.

This may be a ridiculous example that would not actually happen in practice, but it’s only ridiculous because of the dramatic nature of the shift. How many smaller shifts are happening every year without the budget reallocation to support it? Many cause-focused organizations know the areas they need to move focus toward, but most use a “last year plus” method for budgeting. The end result will always be a disjoint between impact and financial support.

As a social impact organization, take time to celebrate every dollar coming in. These funds are more than just “money;” they represent the opportunity to have impact. But the ball is now in your court. What are you going to do with that opportunity? The more impact you can have, the more opportunity you will attract; and conversely, the poorer you manage your opportunity, the less opportunity you will have. 

Get Excited About Budgeting

Get excited about strategizing how those funds can be used to maximize impact or profitability. Have leadership discussions that start first with your vision, mission, priorities, and strategies, considering how to optimize movement toward their achievement using your finances. Think less about budget constraints and think more about budget opportunities.

When you have a budget that is lined up with your overall strategies, it generates creativity among each budget manager to truly optimize those funds to carry out their strategies. Further, having a budget aligned with strategies creates peace of mind for leadership (and all stakeholders), knowing that all assets are working together to carry out the desired impact of the organization.

Start seeing budget and finances differently, and you will be on your way to leveraging it most effectively—to maximizing your impact; to achieving your vision.

If I can be of any assistance, feel free to give me a shout at steve@stevefredlund.com or 651.587.5435. You can find out more about me at stevefredlund.com. 

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Steve Fredlund, FSA, MBA, SWP has 30 years of experience in Fortune 500 companies in primarily financial and analytical roles, with another 10 years in nonprofit roles including staff, board, founder, executive, and volunteer. He currently does independent consulting, coaching, and speaking focusing on small businesses and nonprofits. Steve helps individuals and organizations clearly define what success means to them, and then figure out how to get there. More information is available at stevefredlund.com.

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I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations understand and execute effective marketing campaigns so they can move from stressed to strategic. Your resources may be limited, but your potential isn’t. Whether you’re a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small business who wants to give back, I’ll show you how to have a bigger impact.

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Ask the Experts: Event Planning Trends and Strategies

Each month, I invite guest contributors to speak about timely, relevant, and sought-after topics that are important for cause-focused organizations like yours to be aware of as you grow. For June, I've invited my friend and former co-worker, Kristi Collins from Coco Red Events to share about event planning since many of you are starting to prep and plan for fall events.

Q. What are the latest trends in your industry? 

A. As a foodie, I think my favorite trend right now is casual food, especially a Mexican buffet with fajitas and tacos. I mean, who doesn’t love queso? For dessert, we’re seeing more donut installations, pie bars, and bite-sized treats. Most cakes (wedding, birthday, or anniversary) are smaller with a statement design, such as tiers in geometric shapes, a colored glaze dripping down the side and marbled fondant.

For design, we’re seeing a lot of clients interested in a woodlands theme. Think muted colors like a dusty rose, ivory, and sage green paired with lots of greenery and other natural elements like moss, river rocks, and tree slices. I think a big reason why people are choosing to go this route is because it’s gender neutral and everyone can enjoy the aesthetic. And people always enjoy a good vintage piece. Whether it’s a farm table used as a dessert table or an old library card catalog used to display escort cards, these pieces will create more dimensions to the design.

Our clients are also moving away from the traditional photo booth with props, and opting for a Polaroid camera setup instead. Guests love it because they can take the photos with them, and our clients love it because it’s engaging. At the end of the event, we’ll gather the left over photos and save them for our client, who can turn them into a photo album. The photo album is a great keepsake, whether it’s a coffee table book for a newlywed couple or something to keep in a company break room for employees to flip through.

Q. What is the biggest mistake that you’ve seen people make in regards to event planning?

A. I think everyone should have a day-of coordinator for any event. And I’m not just saying that because I am an event coordinator. Trust me, I had someone coordinate my own wedding! I think it’s so important for our clients to be able to relax and enjoy everything that they’ve envisioned and worked hard to create. If you’re running around, making sure that everything is perfect, you will not have a good time. You should be able to mingle with your guests and enjoy yourself. Even if you’re DIYing your whole event, hire someone to handle the details and make sure that everything runs smoothly on that day. It’s worth every penny!

This is especially important at a fundraiser. Your guests are there because they believe in you and what you’re doing. Think of yourself as the brand ambassador and make yourself available to answer any questions that your guests may have. If they can’t find you to get more information about your cause, they are less likely to support it. We are there to make sure that everything goes off without a hitch and that you are able to reach your fundraising goal.

Q. What is your best piece of advice?

A. I think that people are naïve when it comes to the budget for any event. Many clients don’t know how much it costs to hire a good photographer, caterer, etc. so, they’ll spend money on little things and before they know it, they’re way over budget. My advice, choose your top three Items and spend the bulk of your money there. My top three are always food, music, and alcohol. I like invitations, but they aren’t the most important item to me. Now, if you’re a graphic designer or your company sells paper, the invitations are probably really important to you and that’s ok. Make invitations one of your top three. The important thing is to focus on what’s most important to you, and then build the rest of your budget from there.

Another great thing about working with an event planner is that we get discounts, which we pass onto our clients. A good event planner will save you several hundred dollars in various areas, covering some of their fee.

Additionally, if you’re just diving into the event world, be sure to cultivate relationships with other vendors early on. Find out how you can work together and offer discounts for your clients. Meet other like-minded vendors that specialize in your area and be sure to send them leads for dates that you have already booked. They’ll return the favor and help grow your business. The wedding and event industry is a small one, where everyone knows everyone else. Networking is so very important. Go to as many networking events as you can and start making those connections early on!

Q. What is one thing readers can do this week to improve?

A. If you’re an event planner or getting ready to plan an event, do some research. If I’m planning a company event or fundraiser, I always ask myself the following 5 questions:

1. What is this company’s daily mission?

2. What is their goal for this specific event?

3. What brand-specific elements can we incorporate into the event? (Awards, logo placement, etc.)

4. What is something fun and memorable that we can do during the event to increase brand awareness?

5. Is there something that guests can walk away with that will keep the brand or mission at the front of their mind?

Q. Anything else we should keep in mind?

A. No matter what type of event you’re planning, it’s important to remember the story your organization or client wants to tell. When guests walk into the event, they should be able to look around and know who or what this event is for. Everything should reflect the brand or personality. That’s what makes your event stand out from everyone else’s. And most importantly, make sure that your guests have fun!

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Kristi Collins has been involved with events for over 15 years. She has her BA in Musical Theater from Samford University. After theater, she went into retail, then coordinated events in the non-profit sector and finally found her calling in the wedding and social event industry. Kristi has received her Certifications in Wedding and Event Planning, as well as Social Media Marketing. She lives in Decatur, GA, with her husband, J.R., and her insanely cute dog, Toby.

Learn more about Coco Red Events.

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I'm Kristi Porter, and I started Signify to provide writing, consulting and strategy services to nonprofits and for-profit organizations with a social mission, primarily through copywriting, marketing and business communications. I believe that cause-focused organizations like yours are the future of business. You're proof that companies can both make money and do good. And I'm here to help you get noticed and grow. When you succeed, we all win.

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