Brooke Richie-Babbage is a nonprofit growth strategist and social impact advisor. She is the founder and CEO of Bending Arc, a social impact strategy firm that supports the launch and sustainable growth of high-impact nonprofits, and the host of Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast. Brooke has spent the past 23 years working as a lawyer, nonprofit leader, and social entrepreneur. She has founded and led multiple successful organizations and initiatives, including the Resilience Advocacy Project (RAP), where she served as founder and Executive Director for 11 years, the Sterling Network NYC and the NetLab Initiative, both initiatives of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, where she served as Director of Network Initiatives for six years, and the Social Justice Accelerator (SJA), an initiative of the Urban Justice Center, where she has served as SJA Director since 2019.
She has been a visiting lecturer and featured speaker at numerous graduate and law schools, including Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Fordham. She has presented papers at conferences around the country on social entrepreneurship, non-profit leadership, and community lawyering, and co-produced and hosted the City Watch radio show on WBAI. She served as Secretary and then Chair of the Social Welfare Committee of the NYC Bar Association, as well as the Co-Chair of the Policy Action Committee of the citywide Welfare Reform Network, and an appointed member of both the Governor's statewide Child Care Policy Working Group and Mayor Bloomberg's Adolescent Fatherhood Advisory Council. She has served as a member or officer of several non-profit boards, including as Board Chair for the Community Resource Exchange, and most recently as an officer for the boards of the Urban Justice Center and Nonprofit New York.
Brooke received both her JD and MPP from Harvard and her BA from Yale. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.
Quotes:
I think that there are two versions of your strategic plan. The internal serves as a roadmap for you and your team. It serves as a foundation for work planning, annual planning, next steps, and funding. Then there's an external version. That goes on your website. That is your vision. That is 'where are you taking this organization in the long term?'
There is no one way to do strategic planning. Release yourself from the tyranny of what strat planning is, and start with the question, 'what is the organizational set of goals?' The process can be whatever you want it to be.
Strategic planning is not a pre-structured thing. It is a set of conversations that ideally help you determine where you want to go and what you want your adventure to feel like for all the interested parties.
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This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley
