Author: Valerie F. Leonard
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The Founder’s Trap Nobody Talks About —
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Until It’s Too Late A Mission-Aligned Framework for Nonprofit Succession Planning By Valerie F. Leonard, Founder, Nonprofit Utopia, LLC When a beloved organization loses its founder — whether to retirement, illness, or death — we find out very quickly what was actually built. Was it an institution with systems, shared…
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Before You File: What Every Nonprofit Founder Needs to Know
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You have a vision. You see the need in your community. You have the passion to do something about it. And you are ready to make it official — to start a nonprofit organization. But before you file a single form, there are things you absolutely need to know. Things…
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The Most Important Document (Almost) Never Written
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How a Case for Support transforms your grant writing from a scramble into a system—and why every nonprofit leader needs one before sending another proposal. Every week, I watch passionate nonprofit leaders do the same exhausting dance: a grant deadline appears, panic sets in, and they spend days — sometimes…
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Stop Guessing. Start Knowing. How Nonprofit Leaders Can Use Free Census Data to Tell a More Powerful Story
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You already know your community. You see the needs every day — the gaps in services, the families struggling, the potential going untapped. But when you sit down to write that grant proposal, build out your program logic model, or present to your board, something critical is often missing: the…
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What Type of Chicago Nonprofit Is Growing the Fastest?
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My earlier analysis of Chicago’s nonprofit formation data looked at where organizations are forming — four geographic clusters, each with a distinct formation pattern. But the IRS Exempt Organizations data contains a second layer of information that I haven’t addressed yet: what kinds of organizations are forming. Every organization in the IRS database…
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Chicago Nonprofit Formation: The Tale of Four Clusters
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I’ve been analyzing Chicago’s nonprofit formation data — all 4,212 organizations formed across the city’s 56 ZIP codes between 2021 and 2025, drawn directly from the IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File and cross-referenced with U.S. Census demographic data. What the numbers reveal isn’t one Chicago nonprofit ecosystem. It’s four…
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Illinois Nonprofits: A Troubling Paradox of Growth and Collapse
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A Note on Data: This analysis uses the most recent publicly available data from the Illinois Secretary of State, current through July 15, 2024. Figures for full-year 2024 represent projections based on annualizing data through that date. While newer data would be valuable, the trends revealed here—particularly the dramatic increase in…
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Vision Is Not Enough — You Have to Build the Thing
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Presidential Lessons in Institution Building for Nonprofit Leaders President’s Day is more than a federal holiday. For nonprofit leaders, it is an invitation to study the art and discipline of building institutions that outlast the people who created them. History remembers our greatest presidents not simply because they had vision…
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Nonprofit Utopia Launches “90 Days to a New Nonprofit,” a Structured Online Program Designed to Build Legally Compliant, Grant-Ready Organizations
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CHICAGO, IL — Nonprofit Utopia announced today the launch of 90 Days to a New Nonprofit, a comprehensive online course designed to help aspiring nonprofit founders move from idea to a legally- compliant, funder-credible organization in just 90 days. The next cohort begins March 2, 2026. Interest in starting nonprofit…
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Black History Month, Nonprofits, and the Systems We Forgot to Name
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Black History Month was created to celebrate the achievements of prominent Black people, our culture and critical events that shaped our collective experience. In my view, Black History Month goes beyone celebrating past heroes. It’s about understanding the systems Black people built when the systems around them wouldn’t work for…