Effective Leadership Advisors (ELA) Nonprofit Consulting

Leadership, Cooperation and Dialogue

MISSION

Effective Leadership Advisors (ELA) Nonprofit Consulting is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening Leadership, Cooperation and Dialogue. We leverage the power of Senior Consultants, including legal, business and social science experts, to answer applied research and practice questions and to meet leadership challenges on the basis of best evidence, for charitable purposes and the public good. In situations in which leadership cooperation and dialogue are severely damaged, due to resource restraints, emergencies or disasters , we offer materials support to communities, organizations, students and other individuals who have deep unmet potential.

FEES

Our senior consultants provide clients with rigorous, cost-effective support, on a sliding scale. As a non-profit organization dedicated to charitable purposes and the pubic good, ELA offers the folllowing subsidized fee schedule, adjusted from U.S. currency by the value of currency and cost of living in the country of residence of the client. 

U.S. figures (effective for 2026-2027), adjustable cost outside the USA : 

Students: $50 an hour 

Professionals: $100 an hour

Small non-profits/very small businesses: $75 an hour

Large for-profit companies:     $200 an hour

Fortune 1000 companies: $400 an hour

Do you have a leadership, cooperation or dialogue challenge that your team has not been able to resolve on its own, or has not been willing to spend the money to resolve? That is the work we do.

Our work rests on the conviction that organizations, institutions and communities succeed when they have capable leadership, workable cooperation and honest dialogue. Everything ELA does serves one of those three ends.

LEADERSHIP. We develop the people who carry responsibility — board members, executives, public servants, scholars and emerging professionals — so that authority is exercised wisely, compassionately, competently, lawfully and accountably.

COOPERATION. We help parties optimize cooperation, and parties who must continue working together despite conflict, reach durable agreements and build systems that prevent or manage disputes.

DIALOGUE. We create the conditions for productive conversation and supply the evidence that makes it worthwhile: facilitation, research and analysis that give people a shared and verifiable factual footing.

ORGANIZATIONAL STATUS

ELA is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation incorporated in Maine, USA. We were founded in 2005 as Environment Bolivia and have been doing business as (dba) ELA Nonprofit Consulting since 2024.

WHOM WE SERVE

ELA advises nonprofit organizations, public servants, students and other individuals who are facing barriers to advancement in their missions, their organizations or their careers. We advise, we coach and we teach. We lead professional development education for aspiring and current public servants, and we train nonprofit organizations, public servants and students in optimal applied social scientific, legal and policy research strategy in the face of increasingly complex and challenging environments.

ADVANCED APPLIED RESEARCH

Sound leadership, optimal cooperation and honest dialogue all depend on accurate, shared understanding of the facts and systems designs that promote them . ELA's consultants work with advanced electronic research systems, including databases reaching billions of sources and citation-verification tools that rank and validate the evidence behind claims and designs. Every source we rely on can be traced, checked and defended. We do not assert what we cannot document.

SERVICE INDEX

I. LEADERSHIP

1. Nonprofit Governance and Board Leadership

2. Legal Foundations of Nonprofit Leadership

3. Executive and Professional Development

4. Emerging Leaders: Internships, Higher Education and Fellowships

II. COOPERATION

5. Conflict Coaching and Strategy

6. Mediation and Facilitated Resolution

7. Negotiation Consulting

8. Restorative Practice and Justice Reform

9. Conflict Systems Design

III. DIALOGUE

10. Facilitation and Difficult Conversations

11. Research and Analysis for Informed Decision-Making

12. Scholarly Inquiry: Thesis and Dissertation Advising

I. LEADERSHIP

Leadership is the exercise of responsibility on behalf of others. ELA develops it at every level: the board that governs, the executive who is accountable to that board, the professional building a career of consequence and the student who will lead next.

1. NONPROFIT GOVERNANCE AND BOARD LEADERSHIP

• Board bylaws auditing, revision and compliance review

• Board member onboarding, orientation and self-evaluation

• Committee design and restructuring (Finance, Audit, Governance and others)

• Conflict-of-interest policy development for boards and senior staff

• Board recruitment and diversity strategy

• Executive director and CEO governance coaching

• Succession planning for board leadership and key staff

• CEO and executive director performance evaluation frameworks

• Executive compensation policy review and IRS intermediate sanctions compliance

• Form 990 review for board-level accountability

• State and federal charitable registration and reporting guidance

• Governance risk assessment and mitigation

• Whistleblower and document retention policy development

• Grant compliance oversight advising

• Organizational benchmarking and peer research

• Merger, affiliation and dissolution advising

2. LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF NONPROFIT LEADERSHIP

(Legal services are provided by licensed attorneys on the ELA team.)

• Legal entity selection for new nonprofits

• IRS Form 1023 and 1023-EZ preparation for 501(c)(3) status

• State charitable registration and multi-jurisdiction annual reporting

• State attorney general oversight compliance

• Unrelated business income tax (UBIT) analysis and risk mitigation

• Lobbying and political activity compliance, including IRC 501(h) elections and 501(c)(4) considerations

• Fiscal sponsorship structure advising

• Vendor, consultant and service contract review

• Worker classification advising (employee vs. independent contractor)

• Executive employment agreement review and drafting

• Gift acceptance policy and restricted fund compliance

• Grant agreement review and risk identification

• Intellectual property ownership and licensing advising

• Merger, affiliation and dissolution legal guidance

3. EXECUTIVE AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

(Coaching and advisory services. ELA is not an employment agency, does not guarantee placement and does not charge candidates contingency or placement fees.)

• Executive presence and leadership communication coaching

• Coaching for first-time supervisors, and coaching on managing up

• Performance review preparation, both giving and receiving

• Promotion and internal advancement strategy

• Burnout, boundary-setting and sustainable workload coaching for mission-driven professionals

• Career direction assessment for early-career, mid-career and sector-switching professionals

• Nonprofit and public-interest sector orientation for candidates coming from private-sector or academic backgrounds

• Resume, CV, and academic-to-professional translation

• Cover letter, writing sample and application portfolio development

• Professional presence and profile review

• Job search strategy: target mapping, pipeline building and application cadence

• Informational interview strategy and outreach scripting

• Networking coaching for candidates without an existing sector network

• Interview preparation and mock interviews, including panel and board-facing formats

• Behavioral and case interview practice

• Multiple-offer evaluation and decision frameworks

• Onboarding and first-90-days planning

• Exit strategy, resignation and reference planning

• Employer-side services: job description development, hiring process design and structured interview rubrics for nonprofit clients

(Salary, offer and severance negotiation coaching appears under Cooperation, Section 7.)

4. EMERGING LEADERS: INTERNSHIPS, HIGHER EDUCATION AND FELLOWSHIPS

Internship Program Creation and Management

• Organizational readiness assessment for hosting interns

• Internship program charter and goal-setting

• Intern role description and scope-of-work design

• Supervision frameworks and accountability structures

• Program policies covering conduct, confidentiality, remote work and accessibility

• Paid, unpaid and academic credit compliance guidance

• University and college partnership development for intern pipelines

• Equity-centered recruitment and selection processes

• Intern onboarding curricula

• Mentor-matching protocols

• Learning agreements and academic credit coordination

• End-of-term evaluation and program assessment

• Intern-to-employment conversion pathway advising

• Internship stipend grant-writing support

• Program benchmarking against sector best practices

• Intern alumni engagement strategy

College, Graduate School and Scholarship Placement Advising

• Academic profile assessment and college list development

• Course selection and AP/IB strategy

• Common Application, Coalition Application and school-specific portal guidance

• Personal statement coaching and multi-draft editing

• Supplemental essay advising for individual schools

• Alumni interview and campus visit preparation

• Financial aid guidance, FAFSA support and award letter comparison

• Gap year, deferral and waitlist strategy

• Graduate and professional school placement (law, MBA, MSW, public policy and others)

• Test preparation strategy for the LSAT, GMAT, GRE and MCAT

• Statement of purpose and diversity essay editing

• Recommender selection and briefing strategy

• Program fit and faculty alignment research

• Graduate school interview coaching (MMI, panel and one-on-one formats)

• Nationally competitive fellowship advising: Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, Truman, Gates, Udall and Goldwater

• Institutional nomination portfolio preparation

• Fellowship essay, research proposal and project statement editing

• Fellowship interview preparation

• Graduate funding, assistantship and loan forgiveness research

II. COOPERATION

Cooperation is what leadership produces when it works, even though conflict can be constructive. ELA helps people who disagree, and people who must keep working together anyway, reach agreements that hold — and helps organizations build the structures that keep productive conflict from becoming counter-productive.

5. CONFLICT COACHING AND STRATEGY

(Conflict coaching and negotiation consulting are advisory and are not legal representation.)

• One-on-one conflict coaching for executives, board chairs and program leaders

• Conflict diagnosis: separating interests, positions and identity stakes in a stuck dispute

• Escalation mapping and de-escalation planning for disputes with a long history

• Communication strategy coaching for written conflict, including email, text and board correspondence

• Coaching for parties entering a mediation, arbitration or settlement conference represented by other counsel

• Coaching for parents navigating guardian ad litem, evaluator or court-adjacent processes

• Referrals to credentialed mediators, arbitrators and restorative justice practitioners

6. MEDIATION AND FACILITATED RESOLUTION

(Mediation services are facilitative and do not create an attorney-client relationship with any party, except as explicitly contracted. Arbitration and legal representation may be referred out.)

• Board and staff conflict facilitation, including chair-to-executive-director disputes

• Workplace and interdepartmental dispute mediation

• Family mediation, including intergenerational, caregiving and family-business disputes

• Elder-care and end-of-life decision-making mediation among adult siblings

• High-intensity custody conflict mediation, including high-conflict co-parenting dynamics

• Parenting-plan and communication-protocol development for separated or divorcing parents

• Screening for suitability: identifying cases in which mediation is inappropriate because of power imbalance, coercive control or safety concerns, and referring accordingly

7. NEGOTIATION CONSULTING

• Negotiation preparation, BATNA analysis and concession sequencing

• Multi-party and coalition negotiation strategy

• Employment, separation and severance negotiation coaching

• Salary, offer and scope negotiation coaching, including benefits and title

• Vendor, contract and grant-terms negotiation support for nonprofit staff

• Negotiation training for teams that negotiate regularly on the organization's behalf

8. RESTORATIVE PRACTICE AND JUSTICE REFORM

• Restorative justice framework integration for organizational policy and programming

• Restorative practice integration for organizations seeking alternatives to punitive internal discipline

• Referrals to restorative justice processes: victim-offender dialogue, circles and community conferencing

• Juvenile justice reform research and strategy

• Youth-serving nonprofit program design within the juvenile justice system

• Legal advocacy campaign and coalition-building strategy

9. CONFLICT SYSTEMS DESIGN

• Design of collaboration systems that optimize how families and organizations work together

• Internal grievance and dispute-resolution procedure design for nonprofits

• Conflict-prevention audits: locating the recurring structural sources of disputes

• Coalition and partnership agreements that anticipate disagreement before it arises

• Post-dispute system repair after a conflict has damaged working relationships

• Training staff and volunteers in the organization's own resolution procedures

III. DIALOGUE

Dialogue is how leadership and cooperation are actually carried out: in conversations that are hard to start, hard to hold and easy to avoid. ELA designs and facilitates those conversations, and supplies the verified evidence that keeps them anchored to fact rather than assertion.

10. FACILITATION AND DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS

• Design and facilitation of board, staff and stakeholder dialogue sessions

• Mission and vision review facilitation

• Strategic planning retreats with governance-focused facilitation

• Pre-conversation preparation and rehearsal for high-stakes or long-deferred conversations

• Difficult-conversation coaching for executives, supervisors and board chairs

• Meeting design: agendas, ground rules and decision protocols that keep discussion productive

• Facilitation of dialogue across difference within organizations and coalitions

• Public and community dialogue design for organizations engaging their constituents

• Listening-session and focus-group design for organizations seeking constituent input

• Plain-language briefings that translate legal, technical and research material for lay audiences, in English and Spanish

• Training staff and volunteers to facilitate their own internal conversations

• After-action and lessons-learned review facilitation

11. RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS FOR INFORMED DECISION-MAKING

(Commissioned research is delivered as ELA work product. Reports are issued under ELA's name and may be co-authored or acknowledged by agreement. ELA does not ghostwrite work for publication under a client's sole byline.)

• Commissioned research papers and white papers on client-specified topics

• Literature reviews and evidence synthesis drawing on peer-reviewed and primary sources

• Policy analysis and legislative tracking at the state and federal level

• Landscape scans and field mapping: who is doing what, where, and with what funding

• Comparative jurisdictional research across states or countries

• Program evaluation design and implementation, including logic models and outcome measures

• Needs assessments and community-level data collection

• Survey design, administration and analysis

• Qualitative research: interview protocols, focus groups and thematic coding

• Descriptive and inferential quantitative analysis referral

• Data visualization and reporting for board, funder and public audiences

• Grant-supporting research: needs statements, evidence bases and citation support

• Funder-commissioned research and learning agendas

• Coalition and advocacy research briefs

• Expert-facing research memoranda for attorneys, consultants and agency staff

• Due diligence and background research on organizations, partnerships and mergers

• Benchmarking studies against sector peers or comparable jurisdictions

• Literature and evidence support for organizational strategy development

• Research methodology consultation for organizations conducting their own studies

• Fact-checking, citation verification and source auditing of existing documents

• IRB and human-subjects protocol development for community-based research

12. SCHOLARLY INQUIRY: THESIS AND DISSERTATION ADVISING

(Advising and coaching services. ELA advisors do not serve as academic supervisors of record, do not write or co-write submitted work and do not represent any institution. All work is conducted in conformity with the student's program integrity policies.)

• Program selection and fit assessment across PhD, MSW, MA and MS programs in sociology, psychology, conflict resolution, law and related social science fields

• Application strategy, personal statement development and recommender selection

• Funding, assistantship and fellowship strategy for master's-level applicants

• Orientation to program structures: thesis vs. capstone vs. comprehensive exam tracks

• Research question refinement: narrowing a topic to a defensible, answerable question

• Literature review strategy, search architecture and source management

• Theoretical framework selection and alignment with research design

• Research design consultation: qualitative and mixed-methods approaches

• Sampling, recruitment and access planning for hard-to-reach or protected populations

• IRB preparation: protocol drafting support, consent documentation and vulnerable-population considerations

• Instrument development review: interview guides, surveys and coding schemes

• Data analysis planning and interpretation coaching, not data analysis performed on the student's behalf

• Thesis structure, chapter architecture and argument development

• Writing-process coaching: milestone setting, drafting cadence and revision discipline

• Feedback interpretation: translating committee comments into an actionable revision plan

• Advisor and committee relationship coaching, including managing disagreement among committee members

• Stalled-thesis recovery for students who have gone dormant or missed deadlines

• Defense preparation and mock defense

• Post-thesis pathways: publication, conference submission, doctoral applications and practice application

Adam R. Zemans, Attorney-at-Law. JD, Georgetown Law Center; MSW, University of Southern California; MS in Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University; PhD Candidate, Conlict Resolution Studies, NSU, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Based in Maine and Bolivia.

Jon R. Zemans, MBA: Nonprofit Governance. MBA. University of Chicago. Based in Montana.

Mary Centellas, Attorney-at-Law. Universidad Mayor de San Simon, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Based in Guatemala.

Leon Galindo, MS, Johns Hopkins, SAIS. Washington, D.C. Based in Bolivia.

Abraham Sarmiento, Computer Guru. Based in Bolivia.

PUBLISHING

ELA publishes news and articles deemed relevant to our mission.