What we do

Governance-Led Strategic Restructuring

When two or more nonprofits share a similar mission, a restructuring conversation isn't a concession — it's a strategy. The board will worry about control and reputation. Management will worry about staff and volunteers. Neither forum is well well suited to hash out uncertainties, brainstorm ideas, or describe openly what is driving anxiety. The board and management each feel isolated in these moments. We can help you be objective and focused on what's best for the mission.
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Structured. Neutral.
Mission-First.

The United States has nearly two million nonprofit organizations. In virtually every city and every cause area, dozens of them pursue nearly identical outcomes — competing for the same grants, the same donors, the same board talent, the same staff.

Federal funding disruptions have accelerated the pressure. One in three nonprofit service providers experienced a government funding disruption in 2025. For many organizations, the path forward is no longer a question of whether to consolidate — it's a question of how to do it without losing what makes each organization worth preserving. In 2025, Deloitte reported than 75% of nonprofit boards are considering consolidation. Less than 20% of board members have any experience in that process.
Consolidation is a governance question before it is a legal or financial one. It lives in the boardroom, in the relationship between two executive teams, in the alignment — or misalignment — of two organizational cultures. Most advisors arrive after those questions have been poorly answered. We start there.

Restructuring conversations rarely begin in the boardroom. They begin in a funders office, or in the margin notes of a foundation's renewal letter, or in the silence after a CEO says "our largest grant is not coming back." Funders who have invested in a mission don't want to watch it fragment across three struggling organizations. They want to see it survive in a form that can actually deliver. That is what governance-led restructuring makes possible.
What We Do

A Structured Path From Conversation
to Combined Mission

Not every restructuring is a merger. The path forward might be a full consolidation, a program transfer, a pivot to a new service model, a planned contraction to a sustainable core, or a phased wind-down that protects staff and mission assets. Our first obligation is to help you understand which path fits your situation — before any option becomes inevitable. We work through three phases, each independently scoped. You engage us at the stage that matches where you are.
Phase 1

Readiness & Alignment Assessment

Before any restructuring conversation goes public, the right questions need honest answers. Are the missions genuinely compatible? Are both boards capable of making this decision — and living with it? Is the timing right for both organizations?

We facilitate a structured assessment across both organizations: board alignment, mission compatibility, financial health, cultural fit, and leadership continuity. The deliverable is a written recommendation — proceed, pause, or reconfigure — with a clear rationale that both boards can act on.
Phase 2

Strategic Restructuring Advisory

From letter of intent through legal closing, we guide the governance architecture of the transaction. That means structuring the combined board, planning leadership succession, managing stakeholder and donor communication, facilitating negotiations between leadership teams, and designing the integration so that what made each organization worth combining is what survives.

We represent both organizations jointly as a neutral facilitator. Our role is to keep the mission central when the process gets complicated — and it will get complicated.
Phase 3

Post-Restructuring Governance Build

The transaction closes. The harder work begins. New board composition, revised committee structure, updated bylaws, policy alignment, and — most critically — a CEO operating under a new mandate with a new board. We stay through the transition to make sure the governance architecture you designed on paper actually functions in practice.

Governance Is the Work.
We Have Done the Work.

Most advisors who facilitate organizational combinations come from finance or law. They are skilled at structuring transactions. They are less skilled at the variable that most reliably determines whether a restructuring succeeds or fails: the human and governance architecture that has to function long after the documents are signed.

We assemble the right team for each engagement, drawn from a bench of advisors with directly relevant expertise. Every restructuring engagement is led by Michael Schutzler and supported by the specialists the situation requires. Here are some examples of the experts we can bring to bear on a project.

Funders with a stake in the outcome sometimes underwrite the cost of the assessment. We can help you structure that conversation.

Diana Pinedo
Michael Schutzler
Governance & Integration
More than a dozen transactions planned and executed. More than two dozen board roles across nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors, including multiple governance chair positions. Five companies built and led.

Michael brings the dual perspective of the executive who has navigated boards and the board leader who has held executives accountable — and structures the governance architecture that has to outlast the transaction itself.
Diana Pinedo
Craig Sherman
Legal
Partner at Wilson Sonsini. Decades of experience in corporate law, M&A, joint ventures, and governance. Craig has guided dozens of consolidations and understands the specific legal terrain of nonprofit transactions — including asset transfers, regulatory approvals, and the fiduciary obligations that govern both organizations through the process.
Diana Pinedo
Robert te Winkel
Finance
Veteran CFO with more than twenty years across nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Robert brings financial strategy expertise to the due diligence process — assessing the true health of both organizations, modeling the combined entity, and ensuring the financial architecture of the restructuring serves the mission rather than obscures it.
Elise Cambournac
Elise Cambournac
Operations & Cultural Integration
Three-time CEO and global operations executive. Elise focuses on the work that begins after the transaction closes: the operational integration, leadership alignment, and cultural coherence that determine whether two organizations become one — or remain two organizations sharing a name.
Garrett Link
Kristen Hamilton
Fundraising & Revenue Strategy
Three-time founder with two exits including an IPO. Veteran nonprofit board member and senior executive. Kristen works directly with combined leadership teams on how this restructuring protects the mission, the donor relationships, and the organization's credibility as a grantee? She builds the fundraising strategy and funder communication approach that sustains — and often strengthens — institutional support through the transition.

Too Many Voices.
One Mission.

Every engagement begins with a conversation — not a proposal. We need to understand your situation, your timeline, and what both organizations are actually trying to preserve before we recommend a path forward.

From there, engagements are structured in phases with defined scope, clear deliverables, and milestone-based fees. You know what you are getting and what it costs before any phase begins.

We represent both organizations jointly as a neutral facilitator. That is not a compromise — it is the only way this work can be done honestly. A restructuring that serves one organization at the expense of the other is not a restructuring. It is a takeover. Our role is to find the path that neither board could find alone.
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Engagements typically run six to eighteen months depending on complexity. We work directly with board leadership and executive teams — not below them. And we stay through the transition, because governance architecture that looks clean on paper has to be tested in practice before it can be trusted.

Advisory costs are sometimes underwritten by the philanthropic partners who have the most to gain from consolidating distinct efforts toward a given mission.

If you are exploring whether a strategic restructuring is right for your organization — or the organizations you fund — the first conversation is the right place to start.

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