We don’t just work with nonprofits, we run them

Lance has spent nearly two decades at the intersection of technology and the nonprofit sector, not as a vendor looking in, but as someone who has lived the work from the inside out.

His path into nonprofit leadership followed the route that will be familiar to anyone who's been involved in the sector for long: brought in to help with a specific technical problem, asked to stay, gradually pulled into decisions that had nothing to do with technology, and eventually finding himself thinking about sustainability, governance, and program design the way staff and board members do. That progression — from specialist to generalist to someone who genuinely understands how these organizations work — shapes everything about how Cascadia South operates.

Over the years, Lance has worked with nonprofits at nearly every stage and in nearly every capacity: hands-on technical implementation, technology strategy and procurement decisions, budget rescues, governance development, policy writing, bylaws, charitable registration applications, grant writing, funding amendments, program design, and more. He's been brought in when things are going well to help them go even better, and when things are going badly to help figure out how they can be saved.

What has driven that work consistently is values alignment. This sector attracts people who want to help, and Lance is no exception. He looks for organizations whose missions he believes in and whose communities matter, because that's when the work is worth doing properly.

Today, he sits on the table of partners for a regional health network, serves on the board of a national health advocacy organization, and is actively building a new community nonprofit from the ground up. All of which mean he understands, right now, what it feels like to be at every stage of that journey simultaneously.

Rebecca's path into the nonprofit sector began in the classroom. As a public school teacher for a decade, she developed an early and enduring understanding of what it looks like when systems fail people, and what it takes to build something better in the gaps.

During those years, she became deeply involved in literacy advocacy, moving from volunteer roles into leadership positions within local and state-level nonprofit organizations. It was the beginning of a pattern that has defined her career: she shows up to help, and organizations quickly realize they want more of her.

That pattern continued when Rebecca moved to Canada. New country, same story: a small role at a local organization, a growing scope of responsibility, and eventually a seat at the table where decisions get made. The nonprofit sector has a way of finding the people who are genuinely good at this work, and keeping them.

Today, Rebecca serves on multiple boards and is part of a provincial pilot program focused on disability and return-to-work supports specifically designed to reach workers who have fallen through the cracks of existing support systems. It is exactly the kind of work that defines what this sector is for: finding the people that other structures have missed, and building something that reaches them.

Her perspective at Cascadia South is shaped by more than two decades of that work, across two countries and across the full range of what nonprofit involvement looks like, from the volunteer table to the boardroom. She understands these organizations because she has consistently been one of the people who keeps them going.