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Scaling Impact

Scaling Impact

Written by: NxtStep
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On Scaling Impact we’ll interview leaders in strategy and impact at mission driven organizations that have dramatically increased the level of impact at their organizations.@ 2022 NxtStep Consulting, LLC Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • From Teen Artist to Nonprofit Founder: Gracie’s Journey Battling Hunger & Growing Hope

    From Teen Artist to Nonprofit Founder: Gracie’s Journey Battling Hunger & Growing Hope
    May 26 2026

    From sketching animals as a teenager to founding Harvest107, Gracie shares the journey that turned creativity, family influence, and a little righteous anger into a mission-driven nonprofit fighting hunger through urban gardens, sustainability, and community impact.


    Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Scaling Impact Podcast.


    • How a children’s book inspired Gracie to fight hunger at age 12
    • The birth of Harvest107 and its first community projects
    • Navigating challenges as a young, foreign female leader in Haiti
    • The role of education and organic farming in battling malnutrition
    • Harvest107’s resilience after adversity and its future global goals


    Resources:

    • Harvest107
    • DevNoodle
    • NxtStep


    Connect with Gracie Pfaff:

    • LinkedIn


    Connect with our hosts:

    • Josh Hoffman - LinkedIn
    • Alex Garashchenko - LinkedIn


    Quotables:

    • 07:59 - I have an entire pantry and fridge full of food, yet there are kids just like me down the street and across the country who don't have that. And I was like, that's just unacceptable. Everyone deserves access to healthy and nutritious food, and food in general.
    • 27:54 - And it also taught me to kind of like have a backbone and be a leader and you know, stand up for myself in those spaces. And then I think, especially as we started transitioning to work with primarily women and children, that a lot of that went away.
    • 35:42 - We are, we are healthy, so let's just keep going. I wasn't gonna let it truly set us back. And so we raised enough money to get a plot for a test farm. 'Cause that's always been really important to us to make sure that we have space where we also do a lot of projects with trees.
    • 45:07 - I've always loved, I mean, my dad was an entertainer, so it's like I've always kind of loved that creative side and being able to use that is really fun. Plus, being a nonprofit founder, there were many times in my life where I felt like I was always giving, and I love to give, but at some point, I was like, I need to also like take care of me and do something that fills me up, and creating content was that for me.
    • 46:54 - I think I've never really believed in the whole niche down thing. I, I'm multihyphenate, and I fully embrace that. I love being a nonprofit founder and sharing about giving back. I love being a content creator and a model. I love, you know, just being creative in general. So, as my personal brand, I think the number one thing I go for is just being a good person and being authentic and sharing the things that I love and trying to make the world a better, brighter place.

    If you'd like to learn how to scale impact at your nonprofit organization by more than double in less than half the time, I'd encourage you to sign up for my free 5 day email course at https://nxtstep.io/impact/.
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    50 mins
  • Cash Flow, Creativity, and Culture: Psychedelics and Success with Christian LeFer

    Cash Flow, Creativity, and Culture: Psychedelics and Success with Christian LeFer
    May 13 2026
    In this episode, we sit down with Christian LeFer, founder of Instant Nonprofit, to explore the intersection of culture, festivals, and customer love, and how these elements shape a brand that truly connects. Christian shares the highs, challenges, and unexpected turns of launching and scaling a purpose-driven company, offering a candid look at what works (and what doesn’t) along the way.Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of the Scaling Impact Podcast.Creating a company culture rooted in love and self-understandingLessons from festivals and psychedelics applied to building teamsSimplifying nonprofit formation and avoiding legal pitfallsTurning customer complaints into “refunds to raving fans”Innovative approaches to cash flow and personal growthResources:Instant NonprofitDevNoodlePodcast ChefNxtStepConnect with Christian LeFer:LinkedInConnecting with our hostsJosh Hoffman - LinkedInAlex Garashchenko - LinkedInSean Boyce - LinkedInQuotables:13:20 - If you've ever read Simon Sinek, for example, you know, we believe that the world is not lacking for information. People are not broke because they can't do simple addition and subtraction. People aren't ineffective in what they want to do. Or maybe in switching careers to doing something more meaningful or they don't have the lack, they might not lack the relationship that they desire because of a lack of information. It's really a lack of understanding oneself. And really, to me that starts with self-love because 10 years ago, almost to the day, I lost absolutely everything. My entire life was in a conflagration. And the harder I worked, the worse things got. And I was literally brought down to my knees to where I, nothing that I could do with all my cleverness and ideas and information that I had at that time could help me, and I let go in a way that allowed me to relearn how to be a human.15:58 - And I believe everyone has something inside this divine spark inside them that makes them great, beau beautiful, and unique. And so if you can create a space of safety for that thing to be able to blossom a little bit, you'll get a hundred or a thousand X out of that person, whether it's the guy on the street, your lover, your employee, team member, whatever. And so I started to play with that idea, and that's really how I've built a culture of love at this company, is first and foremost to really try to help everybody have an opportunity to understand everyone else and feel safe in that space in the company.18:07 - I have this thing called refunds to raving fans. And that's something that everybody in on the team has embraced. And it's about just listening to that person. That person might be having a really tough time. They might have a tough board, they might have a tough home life, they might just find it really difficult to start their nonprofit and get through all the stuff, even though we make it so easy. And so listening to them first to diffuse that emotional balloon and create some understanding, appreciation, and just acceptance of that person does at least half the job. And then we go over and above to satisfy whatever it is that, you know, that they might be worked up about.35:03 - My light bulb came on because I had that free space of being disengaged with all these things that had just been taken over my life, and made life just look very impossible. And I said, you know, if we start with process and just do these few simple things, I think we can pull this out and turn this into a juggernaut. And so we threw away the custom software we spent a lot of money on, and I had to let go of that, and I had a lot of letting go to do at that time.52:22 - And I was able to tie that to the specific challenges that we were dealing with at that time. And that concept never left me. And that's just how I look at cash flow now, and it helps me so much on the tough months, right? Or the months where we have a dip or we broke something on the website, and it caused issues. We launched a huge new site, funnels, brand customer portal last year, and our little upward trajectory got knocked off a little bit. And this was really helpful for to me to say, look, it's okay because we just did spent a whole bunch of time beautifying and making this river flow more beautifully. And so when that rain comes, boy is it just gonna flow so nicely through there, and now we're getting the results of that.
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    48 mins
  • The Art of Consulting in the Non-Profit Space Revealed

    The Art of Consulting in the Non-Profit Space Revealed
    Apr 3 2026

    Don’t miss out on this episode where non-profit expertise meets entrepreneurial spirit as Catalina Parker unravels her journey from burnout to brilliance. Learn how non-profit professionals are transforming their passion into profitable consulting businesses, combatting common industry challenges, and leveraging AI for operational efficiency. Whether you're in the non-profit sector


    Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of the Scaling Impact Podcast.

    • Non-profit burnout triggers consulting pivot
    • Strength training as a mental health tool
    • AI fills in busy work, opens strategic room
    • Fractional work is a growing non-profit trend
    • Structuring services for non-profit consulting

    Resources:

    • Relatable Nonprofit
    • DevNoodle
    • Podcast Chef
    • NxtStep


    Connect with Catalina Parker:

    • LinkedIn


    Connecting with our hosts

    • Josh Hoffman - LinkedIn
    • Alex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
    • Sean Boyce - LinkedIn

    Quotables:

    • 09:30: I had found myself having panic attacks in my office every day. I was not a good mother, not a present wife, not a great friend. My whole life was really consumed by work and trying to make a situation that wasn't right for me work. And eventually, I couldn't stop ignoring the signs that my body was sending me, which were these panic attacks. I would have a lot of anger outbursts because I was just so overwhelmed with the emotions. I didn't know how to process emotions. So that's really what made me realize that there was a problem and something needed to change.
    • 13:04 - I think because I was doing what I thought other people wanted me to do growing up, I was always told that, you know, you have to achieve a lot. So there was a lot of pressure put on me at an early age to just push yourself, do better, do better. You're never enough was always the message I was given. So when I did all the things you're supposed to do, you know, I was a straight-A student, graduated college early, did my master's in an Ivy League school, I got my dream job, this was all before I was 30. And it was just because I realized kind, I was just doing what everybody told me to do. Others, what society tells you to do. And I never really asked myself like, what do you wanna do? What makes you happy?
    • 19:38 - I started reading a book by Keith Cunningham, and he mentioned this concept of thinking time, which he took from someone else. But essentially, scheduling time for yourself to just stop and think and going into that meeting with yourself with the right question in mind, like a very specific, narrow question that's an important one for you to answer. I haven't yet worked it into a ritual, but the couple of times that I've done it, I mean it's been, it's had a profound change on my business.
    • 34:32 - I really do believe that the future of the nonprofit sector, because the system really is not built in a sustainable way to support the people working inside nonprofits, right? Like donors believe that people are overhead and we need all of the funding to go just to the mission, but donors sometimes forget, well, who's gonna actually implement that mission work, right? So there are just a lot of issues with the nonprofit, just the system, the sector as a whole, systemic issues that are just going to take a while to be addressed. And that's why we see a lot of people choose consulting or fractional work as an option because it's like, what else do you do? Right? And again, I mean, the nonprofit sector pays people not well, just all of these various issues.
    • 38:04 - Catalina: I have a sales bot trained on our script and everything. It's just incredible how much time you can save if you're using it correctly. I've seen it used incorrectly a lot as well.
      Josh: Yeah, I think just to kinda repeat that, I think it does a good job filling in the busy work that we were just sitting there typing a brief or something like that. And it leaves more time for strategy, which I think is where we get the human involved and let the AI do what it does best, and then we do what we do best.
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    40 mins
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