Make good on your promise to change the world.
Translator of expert-held work. I help complex organizations say what they do in words the people who matter most can understand and trust.
When your audience can’t understand your work, they can’t trust it, fund it, or champion it.
Your organization is full of brilliant people doing important work. But too often, this excellent thinking is stuck using language that your intended audience can’t understand.
I help build strategy and write language that changes this.
What I do
Translator of expert-held work into strategy and language that moves people to give, join, and act.
Consulting
Strategy for clarity.
I work directly with senior leaders of complex organizations to find the message, positioning, and strategy that make your work make sense to the people who matter most.
Start a conversation →Speaking
Hospitality framework for nonprofits.
I lead talks and workshops at conferences, AFP chapters, board meetings, and staff retreats on the Four Spaces from my book, The Welcoming Nonprofit.
Invite me to speak →Writing
Letters from the Front Porch.
Essays on clarity, trust, and staying credibly human in the age of AI. Short, honest, and written for leaders trying to balance efficiency demands and their humanity.
Explore writing →AI
Practical AI for nonprofits.
I help teams fold AI into their workflows, build custom tools that save staff real hours, and train them to use it well.
Start a conversation →“We don't get to decide if someone belongs. They do.”
Brilliant organizations rarely have a thinking problem. They have a translation problem. This costs them money, partners, and momentum.
I’m not a genius in the way people normally think. My genius is the translation of your genius. For twenty years, I’ve done this for organizations doing hard, important things, and I’ve done most of it across the table from senior leaders.
Let’s talk. Tell me what your organization is trying to say and who isn’t hearing it.
Let’s talk
Todd Hiestand
Helping brilliant organizations be understood by the people who matter most.
Todd has spent over two decades translating complex, important work into language people can trust and act on. He founded and led a community-based nonprofit for 14 years, then co-founded a brand and communications firm that served mission-driven organizations across the country. Most of that work happened across the table from executives, boards, and major donors, helping them say the hard-to-explain thing plainly.
He is the author of The Welcoming Nonprofit and the creator of the Four Spaces of Nonprofit Engagement, and he writes regularly about how organizations earn trust in the age of AI. He lives in the Portland, Oregon area with his wife Melanie, four sons, and a lively collection of goats, ducks, chickens, dogs, and other creatures.
Letters from the Front Porch.
Occasional essays on clarity, belonging, and where AI belongs in your organization — and where it doesn’t.