Your Scaling Roadmap
Ready to scale your organization? This is a shared path from where you are today to the growth you know is possible. We help purpose-driven organizations turn vision into a living, actionable roadmap your whole team is ready to carry forward.
The old way of planning wasn't built for how you grow now
Most strategic plans are written once, filed away, and forgotten.
Leaders shape a 3-10 year plan, only to watch it drift as the market shifts and the team moves on. The strategy is often too high-level, hard to implement, and imposed on the team so commitment never arrives. Most plans tend to sit on a shelf with big ambitions, but little follow-through. Many times organizations also suffer from very little team buy-in, especially when people feel that they aren't part of the plan itself, so they end up rarely committing. Strategies that can't keep pace are the very ones that struggle in a fast-changing environment.
Our Process
Unite team & community to co-create your growth path.
Your Results
Build a human-centered plan your team is ready to execute.
A Living Strategic Vision, Built with Your People
The Scaling Roadmap is a collaborative planning process that shapes a clear path for your organization's next phase of growth. We bring your leaders, staff, and the people you serve into the conversation. Together, we uncover what already works, envision what could be, and design a plan your team is genuinely ready to act on. This is nonprofit planning made human, a growth strategy grounded in your strengths rather than in your gaps.
Our Approach to Work as One
Our Positive Creativity approach draws on three practices that work as one:
The Science of Creativity
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Appreciative Inquiry
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Strategic Planning
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Co-Creating the Future
The Science of Creativity
We create space for fresh thinking. Structured creative methods help you see new possibilities and move past ideas that may be holding you back.
Appreciative Inquiry
We start with your strengths. By exploring what your organization already does well, we build momentum from a place of confidence rather than from overwhelming problems.
Strategic Planning
We connect strategy to real demand. Market and stakeholder insights ground your roadmap in trends, the evolving needs of the people you serve, and opportunities that shape your growth.
Co-Creating the Future
A unique process developed by Kim Marie McKernan, founded on the principles of Positive Creativity.
How We Build Your Roadmap Together
Old business processes, such as building 5-year plans in a boardroom with little stakeholder input, no longer work.
Now is the time to engage your employees, customers, and colleagues in a co-creation process designed to explore strengths, successes, opportunities, and aspirations for your future. The result is a fast and actionable strategic plan everyone is committed to achieving.
Step 1: Discovery
We start with a real conversation with your Executive Director to help us understand your world. We listen first, then shape a proposal that reflects your actual scope and strategic intention.
What happens here:
Understand your organization's scope, goals, and context to design the right scope
(Optional) Bring in your Board representatives and Program Leader as needed
Begin to frame your strategic intention to set the direction for what success looks like for your plan
Step 2: Onboarding & Insights
Before we build anything together, we lay the right foundation. We identify the right people to be in the room, forming a diverse core team that reflects the full range of your organization. Then we gather survey feedback to inform their work.
What happens here:
Identify your core team: Diverse board members, staff, leadership, stakeholders, and those you serve
Run an engaging survey to gather insights into real successes, strengths, opportunities, and trends from diverse stakeholders beyond the core team
Step 3: Co-Creating the Future Workshop
This is where the vision comes to life. We bring your core team together for a guided, creative planning session, designed to surface your strengths, unlock fresh thinking, and produce a direction everyone can stand behind.
What happens here:
An engaging, collaborative workshop designed to be equally effective in person or virtually
In person: Half-day or full-day collaborative session depending on your goals
Virtual: Structured into focused sessions of two hours each
We build shared ownership by creating your strategic vision and the actions required to achieve your growth
Step 4: Move Forward
Together, we set priorities, milestones, and next steps your team is ready to implement. We help you bring your roadmap back to your board with clarity and confidence.
What happens here:
Finalize vision, roadmap, and next steps with the Executive Director
Present findings and roadmap to leadership and team
Walk away with clarity, momentum, and a living plan that grows with you
Made for purpose-driven leaders that are ready to grow
By leveraging an experienced facilitator, you can be a full participant in the process with your teams. We will design a process that is flexible to your team’s needs and available time, ensuring that the experience is positive and comprehensive. The result is a plan-on-a-page that brings your vision to life in a way that your organization can understand and be ready to support. In addition, a full report is delivered with your plan and details of every idea shared. Implementation support and creativity tools help you bring your plan to successful results through team engagement.
How we build your roadmap together
Step 1 - Discovery
We start with a real conversation with your Executive Director to help us understand your world. We listen first, then shape a proposal that reflects your actual scope and strategic intention.
What happens here:
Understand your organization's scope, goals, and context to design the right scope
(Optional) Bring in your Board representatives and Program Leader as needed.
Begin to frame your strategic intention to set the direction for what success looks like for your plan
Step 2 - Onboarding & Insights
Before we build anything together, we lay the right foundation. We identify the right people to be in the room, forming a diverse core team that reflects the full range of your organization. Then we gather survey feedback to inform their work.
What happens here:
Identify your core team: Diverse board members, staff, leadership, stakeholders, and those you serve
Run an engaging survey to gather insights into real successes, strengths, opportunities, and trends from diverse stakeholders beyond the core team.
Step 3 - Co-Creating the Future Workshop
This is where the vision comes to life. We bring your core team together for a guided, creative planning session, designed to surface your strengths, unlock fresh thinking, and produce a direction everyone can stand behind.
What happens here:
An engaging, collaborative workshop designed to be equally effective in person or virtually
In person: Half-day or full-day collaborative session depending on your goals
Virtual: Structured into focused sessions of two hours each
We build shared ownership by creating your strategic vision and the actions required to achieve your growth
Step 4 - Move Forward
Together, we set priorities, milestones, and next steps your team is ready to implement. We help you bring your roadmap back to your board with clarity and confidence.
What happens here:
Finalize vision, roadmap, and next steps with the Executive Director
Present findings and roadmap to leadership and team
Walk away with clarity, momentum, and a living plan that grows with you
Made for purpose-driven leaders ready to grow
Nonprofit Organizations
Ready to align your team and board around a shared direction?
Bring your people, your board, the people you serve, and your funders into the plan, and watch organizational alignment translate into real progress.
Nonprofit Startups
Building a fast-growing organization and unsure how to keep your mission aligned?
Build a scaling roadmap that evolves as your nonprofit, funders, and community change.
Purpose-Driven For-Profits
Do you feel that shaping a purpose-driven organization requires a different approach?
Growth needs to be intentional. Define a clear path that reflects your vision and moves you toward it with confidence.
What you carry forward
A Scaling Roadmap gives you more than a plan. It gives your team a shared sense of purpose and a clear path forward.
Your Results
A plan your team owns - Strong ownership because your people helped build it.
Direction that adapts - A living strategic plan that flexes as your environment shifts.
Clarity on your next move - Priorities and milestones you can act on immediately.
Stronger organizational alignment - Leaders, staff, and stakeholders aligned in the same direction.
Momentum that lasts - A plan that keeps working long after our work together ends.
Case Studies
Building a Better Future: Positive Creativity in Healthcare
CHC-Burlington was a successful Federally Qualified Health Center with a clear mission and visionary leadership seeking a facilitator for a three-year plan involving staff and partners. There was little available time from busy healthcare providers, and it needed to be presented to the board in approximately three months. Healthcare delivery for this organization is highly dynamic, with numerous different services, trends, and opportunities that will impact the future.
The Challenge
We went beyond the typical leadership roles to develop a core team made up of diverse roles and tenures tasked to complete the plan. Due to confidentiality and time constraints, we used a train-the-trainer model with the core team holding world cafe sessions involving 80 employees from all locations in sessions. We also completed the process with the board, offered an employee survey open to all employees, and interviewed 14 community partners. The two-day offsite resulted in a strategic plan that was comprehensive and widely supported by the organization.
The Solution
By leveraging the power of Positive Creativity and the voices of a wide group of employees and partners, CHC-Burlington gained clarity on their strengths and turned them into a foundation for sustainable success. This approach didn’t just transform processes, it created a culture where everyone felt heard, valued, and empowered to contribute to the collective vision.
“In prior processes, the conversation was still in the past, and the number of problems seemed overwhelming. This process helped shift our mindset from a lot of problems, to a focus on how to fix the problems, to an emphasis on how do we get into the future that we want.”
– Sam Arnold, COO
The Results
Using Positive Creativity to Transform Medical Education
New perspectives are needed to deal with changes in medical education. Topics included selecting a medical specialty, becoming a healthcare ally, and encouraging positive engagement with the community.
The Challenge
Use the Co-Creating the Future Process to create collaborative sessions to change perspectives, explore strengths, and build engagement with residents, interns, and staff. Dr. Mishra and Kim presented the work's results at several conferences, including the Appreciative Inquiry Jam and Medical Education and Educational Research Institute (MEERI) conference.
The Solution
“If you are looking for expert assistance to help you bring a group of people together around a vision, mission, goals, or action plans, you will find no one better than Kim. At an individual level, she not only meets you where you are but takes you beyond where you want to go!”
– Archana Mishra, MD, MS, FACP, FACP, Associate Professor of Medicine; Program Director, Resident Wellbeing and Advocacy Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences University At Buffalo.
The Results
Meet the people behind your roadmap
The ION Collective - experts who value excellence
Kim Marie McKernan, MBA, MS
Founder | Branding & Marketing Strategist | Master Strategic Planning Facilitator
Steve Harvey Ph.D
Consultant, Speaker, Coach & Mentor | Nonprofit Transformation Leader
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In the Scaling Roadmap, Kim serves as your objective facilitator, the steady, creative presence who holds the space, guides the conversation, and ensures every voice in the room shapes the outcome. She brings that role to life with more than 30 years of experience in branding, marketing, and business planning, including a distinguished career at a $3 billion organization and six years as an independent strategic planning facilitator and consultant. As founder of Inspired Outcomes Now LLC, Kim has helped CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit leaders turn vision into results by drawing on Positive Creativity and advanced marketing, producing not only a strategy but also the real buy-in behind it.
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In the Scaling Roadmap, Steve serves as the expert in the room, the strategic anchor whose presence gives your team confidence that the plan you are building is grounded, realistic, and genuinely ready to carry your organization forward. He brings that role to life with 30 years of experience as a nonprofit CEO and consultant, a track record that speaks for itself, and expertise spanning governance, capacity building, performance management, funding diversification, program expansion, and organizational growth. Steve has founded two nationally recognized nonprofits, raised more than $41 million in grants, and built organizational capacity from the ground up across diverse sectors. Leaders seek him not just for answers but for the clarity and direction only deep, lived experience can offer. He is widely regarded as an expert among experts in nonprofit strategy, strategic planning, and organizational development.
Why we do this work
We built the Scaling Roadmap because purpose-driven organizations deserve a planning process that truly works for them. Too often, strategic planning is complicated, time-consuming, and disconnected from the realities of a fast-changing world, leaving leaders with documents they can't use and teams that never fully commit. We believe it doesn't have to be that way.
Our work is grounded in a simple, proven truth: When the process is clear, collaborative, and creative, the results follow. We show up with integrity, communicate openly at every step, and design each engagement to be both straightforward and effective. Whether you're navigating growth, shifting your model, or creating new programming, we're here to help you move forward: strategically, confidently, and together.
Commitment to driving impact - We show up for purpose-driven organizations because this work matters. Every roadmap we build reflects a genuine desire to help you create lasting, meaningful change for you and your team.
Simplifying a complex process - Strategic planning doesn't have to be overwhelming. We take a process that can feel daunting and make it clear, manageable, and even energizing for your team.
Helping you work smarter - We bring structure and fresh thinking to help your organization become more strategic, collaborative, and creative, all at once.
Built for a fast-changing world - We design our process to meet today’s realities, not the assumptions of five years ago. Your roadmap flexes and moves with the environment around you.
Responsive communication - You'll always know where things stand. We communicate clearly, promptly, and honestly at every stage of our work together.
Integrity at the core - We do what we say we will do. Every recommendation we make and every step we take is grounded in honesty and a genuine commitment to your success.
What's included - and what's possible
The Scaling Roadmap is a high-touch, expert-led engagement. Every element is designed to provide you and your team with the clarity, alignment, and momentum to move forward with confidence.
Once your Scaling Roadmap is in place, we can help you implement it. Add-on services are available to deepen your strategic foundation and expand your reach.
Case for Support - A compelling, data-informed narrative that communicates your mission and makes funders, partners, and stakeholders want to say yes.
Grant Language - Clear, persuasive language crafted to align your strategy with grant opportunities and increase your chances of funding.
Brand Strategy - A full brand discovery and strategy process to ensure your identity, messaging, and positioning reflect who you are and where you're headed.
Startup Services - Foundational support for new ventures, from early-stage brand building to business planning and go-to-market strategy.
Strategic Planning - Deeper planning support for organizations ready to map a longer-range direction beyond the Scaling Roadmap engagement.
Scaling Roadmap engagements start at $4,500.
Final investment reflects the scope, scale, and depth of your organization's needs. We'll walk through that together in your discovery call.
Questions Leaders Ask
We also offer additional services that have been thoughtfully designed to help elevate your brand's success and improve its overall presence in the competitive market. These services aim to enhance your visibility and effectively communicate your unique value to your target audience.
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The Scaling Roadmap is a collaborative planning process that helps purpose-driven organizations define a clear, actionable path for their next phase of programmatic or organizational growth. We bring your leaders, staff, and stakeholders together to build a living actionable plan your entire team is ready to carry forward.
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Both. The Scaling Roadmap is built to flex around what you're trying to grow, whether that's strengthening a specific program or setting a shared direction for your entire organization. We start by understanding your scope and what matters most right now, then bring the right people into the room to build a plan around it. If you're not sure which focus fits your situation, we'll help you figure that out together in your discovery call.
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It's built for nonprofit leaders, growing purpose-driven organizations, and founders shaping both for-profit and nonprofit ventures. Whether you're navigating growth, shifting your model, or creating new programming, this process meets you where you are and helps you move forward: strategically, confidently, and together.
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Timelines vary with your scope and scale, and engagements move at a steady, manageable pace, with completion in as little as one month. The collaborative session can be held in a single half-day to full-day in person, or across focused two-hour virtual sessions. We design the full timeline with you during discovery.
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Scaling Roadmap engagements start at $4,500. Your final investment reflects the scope, scale, and depth of your organization's needs. We'll walk through everything together during your discovery call, with no surprises.
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Traditional strategic planning often produces lengthy documents written by a few people behind closed doors, then filed away. Our collaborative planning process is different. We start with your strengths through Positive Creativity, bring diverse voices into the room, and design a living scaling plan your team genuinely owns and that is built to adapt to a fast-changing world.
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Yes. Once your roadmap is in place, you can extend it with add-on services such as a Case for Support, grant language, deeper strategic planning, brand strategy, or startup services. We're happy to discuss bundling options during your discovery call.
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While our work centers on nonprofits and purpose-driven organizations, the Scaling Roadmap also supports founders building purpose-driven ventures. If growth and organizational alignment matter to you, we'd love to talk
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Together, Kim and Steve bring a rare pairing of skills. Steve is a nonprofit CEO and consultant with 33 years of experience, an expert among experts in nonprofit growth strategy, who has founded two nonprofits and raised over $41 million in grants. Kim is a creativity facilitator and brand expert with more than 30 years in branding, marketing, and business planning, plus six years as an independent strategy facilitator. Kim guides the process. Steve provides expert ideas. You get both.
Let’s Shape Your Path Forward
Meeting you where you are, and taking you where you want to go.
Your next phase of growth deserves a plan your whole team believes in.
We're here to build it with you.
