Who We Are

Our Mission

The mission of the Executive Coaches of Orange County (ECofOC) is to help nonprofit managers fulfill more of their nonprofit management mission. Our staff of over 60+ experienced executives can coach and mentor you on virtually any nonprofit management and leadership issue, including board development, fundraising, program management, finance, IT, HR, personal development and career planning, all at no cost to you or your nonprofit.

Nonprofit Management Staff

All of our coaches are experienced executives who volunteer their time to mentor and coach our clients nonprofit management and leadership processes. ECofOC currently coaching over 200 nonprofit managers and since 2002, we have coached and mentored over 600 nonprofit managers, making us, by far, the largest nonprofit management and leadership coaching organization in the county. 

Go to Benefits of an Executive Coach for more information about our coaching program.

Go to  ECOC-intro to review a PowerPoint presentation on the features and benefits of our service offerings.

 

Our Organization

ECofOC’s nonprofit management and leadership coaches donate their time to help nonprofit managers develop themselves and their nonprofit. We offer our services free of charge to Orange County’s nonprofit leaders.

Our no-cost services:

Executive Coaching in nonprofit management, our principal program, provides one-on-one coaching to nonprofit leaders. Our coaches help leaders set specific goals and solve difficult issues from a nonjudgmental perspective in a confidential setting. Coaching can address virtually any nonprofit management issue, including board development, fundraising, outreach, leadership, management, finance, IT and HR issues, personal development and career planning. To apply for a coach, click here.

  • Board Retreat Facilitation services include guidance in retreat agenda development, help in logistical planning and retreat facilitation. Our experienced facilitators will help you tailor your retreat to deliver the expected results. To learn more about these services, simply email us at BoardRetreat@ECofOC.org 
  • Executive Director Forum Our Executive Director Forum is comprised of 10 to 15 executive directors facilitated by two experienced ECofOC nonprofit management coaches in monthly meetings using a proven process to guide the group to practical solutions for issues brought to the table by each participant. These sessions allow executive directors to test ideas and work though issues with a group of their peers. To learn more about this program, click here.

ECofOC works in collaboration with six other Orange County nonprofits:

1.  The Orange County Community Foundation (www.oc-cf.org) helped us get established in Orange County. A donor advised fund at OC-CF provides us with most of the funding needed for our program expenses.

2. The Orange County SCORE Chapter (https://www.score.org/orangecounty) offers for-profit start-ups and small businesses a wide variety of workshops and counseling services that can be useful to nonprofit managers. Some of our executive coaches are also SCORE counselors.

3. OneOC (www.OneOC.org) offers nonprofit managers a wide variety of workshops and consulting services that can also help the nonprofit build their business and their nonprofit management skills. We encourage our clients to take advantage of their low-cost workshops.

4. Charitable Ventures (www.charitableventuresoc.org) work with complex social issues by offering sponsorship, incubation, and capacity building services helping nonprofits launch and sustain their philanthropic efforts. Charitable ventures utilize ECofOC Coaches to work with many of their Fiscally Sponsored project leaders and has engaged our coaches as volunteers on education and training projects.

5. Gianneschi Center for Nonprofit Research (Zoot Velasco)  (www.business.fullerton.edu/engagement/GianneschiNonprofitResearch) uses the power and resources of California State University, Fullerton and the College of Business and Economics to “Grow Excellent and Exciting Exempt Organizations” (G3X) in our community. The Gianneschi Center is our partner in promoting superior leadership through training, coaching, and special events that benefit the OC nonprofit community.

6. The Nonprofit Collaborative of Southern California (Janet Forhman group) (npcollaborative.org) mission is helping nonprofits succeed. The network of combined knowledge represents key areas critical to a nonprofit’s organizational stability and sustainability including Human Resources, Accounting, Legal, Fundraising, Insurance/Risk Management, Marketing/Public Relations, Information Technology, Transitional Management and Evaluation/Sustainability. Members meet monthly to review nonprofit trends and best practices in their combined support of hundreds of Southern California-based nonprofit organizations. 

 

Joining ECofOC

In order to apply to be a ECofOC coach, the applicant must: 

  1. Have extensive experience in leading, managing and coaching other managers and professionals in how to increase their organizational effectiveness.
  2. Must be willing to attend 3-6 meetings a month during normal work week hours in order to meet with the clients they are coaching and to attend our monthly meetings.
  3. Must be willing to commit to our coaching program so that their clients can have the long-term mentoring relationships that are most effective.
  4. Must agree to not personally derive any revenue from any of our clients or any prospects that our clients might refer to us.

 

Anyone meeting the requirements, who would like to become an ECofOC coach, should send an Email to Volunteers@ECofOC.org, providing their name, phone number and Email address. We will follow-up with a telephone interview to determine if it is a good mutual fit. If so, we will ask the candidate to send us a one-page bio and come to our next monthly meeting, where they can introduce themselves to the group. If all goes well, we will invite the candidate to join ECofOC.

 

New members are paired with an experienced member who serves as a mentor in guiding them through their three months of nonprofit coaching orientation consisting of:

 

  1. An orientation on the nonprofit culture and the history of ECofOC and its current organization and practices
  2. Observe several coaching sessions being conducted by our coaches
  3. Attend at least two monthly coaches’ meetings and make one presentation.

 

When a new member completes this orientation and feels they are ready, they are assigned a nonprofit client. Our experienced members typically coach and mentor two to five clients (Click here for a listing of the clients we coached last year).

 

The Executive Coaches of Orange County meet on the second Monday of every month to continually develop our knowledge of the nonprofit community and its management. We have a guest speaker at most of these meetings. Half of the presentations are by outside experts on a nonprofit management issue and possible coaching approaches. Other presentations are by clients on their nonprofit’s mission, capacity building strategies and current issues.

 

We measure the quality of our work by our coaches’ ability to retain clients and their clients’ willingness to refer potential clients to us. Our clients have been with us for an average of 35 months and on average, 50% of the nonprofit managers who applied for a coach were by client referral.