Children's Advocacy Centers
Consulting for CAC leaders, from someone who has sat in your chair and spent years supporting centers across Oregon.
You already know the work
You know what a Children's Advocacy Center does and why a multidisciplinary response matters. You live that work every day, so I'd rather focus on what it truly takes to lead one well.
What matters is whether I understand the realities you're navigating: funding that rarely quite matches the need, the accreditation cycle, and a board that sometimes needs bringing along. And then there's your staff, carrying work that's heavy by its very nature, and the quiet, constant balancing act of keeping good people in their roles.
Where my experience comes from
My experience comes from two places, and each one strengthens the other.
First, I served as an executive director myself, navigating these challenges from inside a center rather than reading about them from the outside.
Then I spent four-plus years at Oregon's statewide network, Oregon Child Abuse Solutions, supporting every CAC in the state. Centers of every size, with needs that varied enormously, though there was nearly always a throughline that every nonprofit in this space shares.
My work across the statewide network
- Training and mentoring executive leaders and their staff, along with technical assistance and guidance over a number of years.
- Onboarding new executive directors. Orientation, matching each new director with a mentor, and supporting them one-on-one through the parts of the role no one quite prepares you for.
- Accreditation. Guiding centers through accreditation requirements, documentation, and preparation.
- Grants, budgets, and risk. Supporting centers with state-level grant requirements, budgeting, reporting, and risk analysis and management. I've also worked directly with state funders and their CAC grantees, so I understand both sides of that table.
- Statewide forensic interviewer training. I facilitated the training, managed the subject matter experts who delivered it, and supported curriculum development. To be clear, I'm not a forensic interviewer and I don't present myself as one. My role was to make sure the program ran smoothly and served centers well.
- Legislative visits to Washington, DC. For several years, I coordinated these visits for executive directors and members of their teams.
- Annual team-building gatherings for the network.
What that experience has meant
The work I'm proudest of has been with small, under-resourced centers, helping them reach accreditation and other milestones that once felt out of reach given what they had to work with.
Those achievements are rarely quick wins. They grow from steady, patient work on governance, documentation, funding, and leadership capacity, and that's exactly the kind of work I love doing.
Who usually reaches out
Most often, it's the executive director.
Sometimes it's a board member looking for support with strategic planning, a leadership evaluation, or guidance on a decision the board is weighing.
Both are so welcome. It helps most to know what you're facing, what you're hoping will be different, and who will be part of the decision.
Let's start a conversation
Share a little about what's in front of you. If I'm the right person to help, I'll let you know, and if I'm not, I'll gladly point you toward someone who is.
More on the wider consulting work: Consulting and Fractional COO and operations.