How you start a project is just as important as how you finish it. Here’s how See What I Mean philanthropy consultant Kerry McHugh “starts” in 4 areas with her clients: conversations, onboarding, check-ins, and building trust.
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We asked our team of nonprofit consultants for their best end-of-year (fiscal year!) team questions. Here are the 6 they keep coming back to.
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Data never tells the whole story. People do. Jenna Hoover, CNP, shares four ways to keep your data practices grounded in relationships, not extraction.
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There’s a “new” type of segmentation that addresses the issues of the old tiering system while helping you sort your agencies into helpful groups that get targeted types of support. At SWIM, we think it's a meaningful shift, and food banks are putting it into practice. Here’s what it looks like.
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When Harvesters partnered with SWIM to do a Service Area Assessment and Network Assessment across their 27-county region in Missouri and Kansas, Jury Paulson and his team got to step back and see that wider picture. What they found changed how Harvesters works.
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If you have just finished a strategic plan, or you are sitting on one right now, consider these five moments where your strategic plan can become part of your daily operations.
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I’ve spent 10+ years in and around philanthropy since then as program officer, board member, family foundation trustee, advisor, and consultant. Here are five thingsI wish I’d known when I built that very first grantmaking process.
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Read one food bank's step-by-step path to AI clarity: a committee, a small policy update, and a framework that actually got leadership aligned.
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Food as Medicine expert Amy Haynes will share the best methods for getting a FAM program started in your food bank. See how Food as Medicine methods are changing long-term health outcomes for people who face both food insecurity and nutrition insecurity.
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Resuscitate your meetings by adding CPR. This acronym helps groups get unstuck and keeps the work alive and moving.
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Work toward equal and active participation in a group discussion with these 18 methods. Get participants saying more…or saying less.
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If your network is facing a moment where you feel unsure of next steps, these mindsets will help you center yourself amidst the chaos and take your best next step.
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These research-backed learning strategies actually get participants talking, engaging, discussing, and retaining information more effectively.
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From food insecurity to philanthropy, from housing to higher education, we've seen our partners do incredible work in their communities this past year. Here is a glimpse into the ways SWIM got to help clear the fog for 8 wonderful, community-transforming organizations in 2025.
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At SWIM, we create custom strategic plans for more than a dozen organizations per year in the anti-hunger, health care, higher education, economic well-being, and philanthropy sectors. Here’s how we do it.
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When centering our information-sharing on building relationships, we can create stronger partnerships in a shorter time, because we all hold collective accountability for the meaning behind the numbers. Here are four intentional ways to use data to create stronger partnerships, using examples from our client base.
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Learn how Shared Accountability, a SWIM framework, helped a community college district get more done and strengthen relationships.
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Stacy Van Gorp, who did her Ph.D. in trust-building, is going to show you how to build trust through explicit expectation-setting in your organization.
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Avoid burnout as you work on strategic planning by using the Adapt, Accelerate, Release, Add framework. You’ll integrate your current work with your new goals with this efficient approach.
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Food bank leaders created 60+ AI use cases in SWIM’s AI cohort. See our top 5 favorites (with prompts you can try today) and download the full list.
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