King Gorden, thank you for taking the time to walk me through where Scottington is right now. What you said about losing your purpose — that stood out immediately. That kind of drift doesn't happen because people stopped caring; it usually happens when the organization is moving fast, stretched thin, and the center stops holding. The analysis below names the three patterns that are most likely driving that feeling, and what to do about them.
Jesse Lane founder of goodmakerU, has a message to walk you through your report to let you know whats here, and how to use it.
When you said 'honestly everything would struggle' if you stepped back, that answer tells a full story on its own. At fewer than three years old with a team of 2–5 people, it's almost inevitable that the founder becomes the connective tissue — but there's a tipping point where that stops being a feature and starts being a fragility. The fact that you've also had 3–5 staff departures in that same window suggests the organization hasn't yet built the internal structures that let people operate with confidence when you're not in the room. Add in the communication friction with your board, and what you're describing is a hub-and-spoke model where every spoke runs directly through you. That's exhausting, and it's also one of the clearest reasons an organization can start to feel like it's lost its purpose — because mission clarity requires shared ownership, not just one person carrying the vision.
You flagged that a single source makes up more than 51% of Scottington's revenue, and your primary funding type is corporate sponsorships. That's a meaningful concentration risk for any organization, but it's especially acute at your stage and budget size. Corporate sponsors renew based on visibility, relationship, and brand alignment — and if your brand messaging is already feeling unclear (which you acknowledged), that renewal conversation gets harder every cycle. You're also pursuing grant funding as a top priority, which is exactly the right instinct, but grants take 6–18 months to materialize. Until that pipeline is built, a single sponsorship decision by one company has the power to reshape your entire operating year. That's not a comfortable position when you're also trying to re-anchor around mission.
A donor retention rate of 11–20% means that for roughly every 10 people who give to Scottington, 8 or 9 of them don't come back. That's one of the clearest signals that something in the stewardship experience — the communication, the impact reporting, the sense of belonging — isn't landing the way it needs to. Given that you're also in the middle of a purpose drift, this makes sense: when an organization's own team is uncertain about the mission, that uncertainty travels outward to donors. People give again when they feel connected to something clear and meaningful. Right now, Scottington may be sending signals that create doubt rather than confidence, and that's fixable — but it starts with getting the mission story sharp again before doubling down on donor acquisition.
These three blockers are not separate problems — they're the same problem showing up in three different places. The founder dependency means that Scottington's mission, relationships, and decision-making are all concentrated in one person. That concentration of leadership directly mirrors the revenue concentration risk: when identity and funding both funnel through a single point of failure, the organization becomes brittle. And because the mission itself is feeling unclear right now, the donor experience suffers — people can't stay connected to a story they can't follow. The retention rate isn't a fundraising problem, it's a clarity and trust problem that traces back upstream. Fixing the purpose drift and distributing ownership are the root interventions. Everything else — sponsorship diversification, donor retention, board engagement — becomes more tractable once Scottington has a shared, legible mission that doesn't live only in your head.
Get your team and your board in on this conversation. Reports like this one work best when the whole organization can tackle issues together.
