Coneflower Consulting, a new Independent Sector business associate member, is a woman-owned business that helps creative nonprofits, institutes of higher education, and small businesses amplify their missions. Sarah Bishop, Coneflower Consulting CEO, explains how they empower mission-driven organizations with strategies for creative growth.
Tell us about your mission and the need(s) it addresses.
Coneflower Consulting is a woman-owned consulting firm committed to empowering mission-driven organizations with creative strategies for sustainable growth. Our clients are nonprofit organizations, universities, government agencies, and for-profit entities that value purpose over profit. We provide a wide array of services — including fundraising and grant writing, board development and strategic planning, executive search and fractional leadership, as well as marketing, web design, and graphic design — so that our clients can amplify their mission across audiences and platforms and ensure that they are motivating their stakeholders to act.
How does your work address those concerns?
Founded in 2020, we are proud that 1 out of every 4 of our clients are already repeat customers. We believe our clients’ loyalty is a result of our ability to understand and communicate the “big picture” of their work. We use our expertise in storytelling with words, images, and numbers to help our clients share their missions in ways that transform minds, motivate organizational stakeholders, shift local policy, and open pocketbooks.
Whether we’re writing a federal grant proposal, leading a capital campaign feasibility study, or developing C-suite job postings, we keep our clients’ missions at the forefront of our minds as both inspiration and end-goal.
What motivated you to work in the nonprofit sector, and what inspires you most as head of your organization?
I have a background in the humanities, and for almost a decade, my dream was to be an English professor. Due to the 2008 recession, this dream did not come true, which surprisingly, has turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of my life. Though I initially thought of it as Plan B, I am endlessly humbled and delighted to have my current job — leading a team of incredibly talented staff to collaborate with altruistic clients who change the world for the better.
We get to help people help people, and as much as I love literature, making a real difference in the lives of our clients and contributing to the well-being of those they serve is a joy that is unmatched in my experience — even by the very best novels!
What concerns do you have for your organization as our sector grapples with challenging times?
I am concerned about what I am calling the “triple-whammy” of recent significant cuts to federal funding for the charitable sector, the increasing impact of AI on white collar jobs, and uncertainty in the face of a potential economic recession. Because these changes directly impact our clients, they directly impact us.
But as concerned as I am for our clients and our business, I am more concerned for all the many people who are now or may soon be unemployed or underemployed and who will have fewer services available to help them through an economic downturn as a result of the rapid reduction in resources that so many nonprofits are experiencing.
While I know the hope is that AI will cut the costs of administration for many charitable sector organizations, I don’t believe that the resulting cost efficiencies will, at least initially, be enough to offset the increased demand for social services resulting from these human job losses.
What influenced your decision to become an Independent Sector member, and how can being in our membership community help you better achieve your mission?
Sarah Bishop, CEO of Coneflower Consulting
I am interested in thinking through what can be done to strengthen mission-driven organizations, including nonprofits, colleges and universities, and city and county governments, during this time. How can we, as Independent Sector members, work together to reimagine the interrelationships between the nonprofit, academic, and government ecosystems to create social change that promotes the well-being of all people, not just the few?
Through my job at Coneflower Consulting and my work as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Utah, I am committed to conversations that seek to answer these questions conceptually, but that also result in actionable next steps for real policy change.
What’s one thing about your organization that people would find surprising?
Coneflower Consulting has clients from across the country, but we were founded in Kansas (my home state!), and we have a deep commitment to our “Heart of America” beginnings. The coneflower is a perennial wildflower that is native to the State of Kansas — it comes in many colors and is known for its deep taproot, making it highly drought tolerant and capable of weathering lots of change — just like us!
When we were trying to decide on a name for the business, it somewhat jokingly came down to Coneflower Consulting or Wagon Rut Consulting (after the Santa Fe Trail wagon wheel ruts that mark the prairie landscape). Thank goodness Coneflower Consulting won out!
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