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Case Study

LAJC: Six Months to Stabilize, Equip, and Rebuild Fundraising Culture

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Client Snapshot


Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) is a regional legal advocacy organization navigating complex community needs and a changing fundraising environment. When its Development team entered a period of leadership transition, LAJC asked MissionCraft to provide interim leadership and help reset how the team worked together—so the new Director of Development wouldn’t inherit another burnout cycle.

Protesters Holding Fists
I don’t know what I would have done without Tina. She led our fundraising team through a major leadership transition and staffing gaps—providing steady interim leadership, onboarding support for our new director, and helping rebuild healthier team dynamics and communication.

Her leadership nurtured real cultural shifts: the team started talking more regularly and honestly, and our workflows became clearer and more efficient, reducing those “who’s on first” moments. I could rest easy at night and focus on stewardship and hiring, knowing the team was in good hands.

Angela Ciofli, Executive Director

The Challenge

A Transition That Exposed Culture and Workflow Gaps

When MissionCraft stepped in, LAJC’s Development team was:

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  • Operating without a unified fundraising roadmap

  • Relying on individual workarounds instead of shared systems

  • Carrying unresolved interpersonal tensions that made collaboration harder

  • Navigating uncertainty about future roles, expectations, and capacity

 

People were committed and working hard—but mostly as individuals, not as a coordinated team. Leadership needed more than stopgap coverage; they needed a culture-conscious transition that would stabilize the present and set up the next chapter for success.

Our Engagement 

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1

Interim Leadership & Stabilization

MissionCraft served as Interim Director of Development, providing day-to-day leadership and beginning a reset in how the team communicated and collaborated.

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  • Reintroduced 1:1s and team meetings with clear agendas

  • Surfaced patterns in culture, workload, and trust impacting performance

  • Completed performance evaluations with an eye on future roles and capacity

  • Stabilized operations so the incoming Director wouldn’t be walking into full crisis

2

Onboarding & Thought Partnership with New Director

As the new Director of Development stepped into their role, our work shifted from direct supervision to equipping new leadership.

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  • Authored a Development Director Transition Readiness Brief with staff portraits, team dynamics, and a strategic gap assessment

  • Provided 90-day recommendations, quick wins, and relationship priorities

  • Served as a sounding board on role adjustments, workload, and conflict conversations​

3

Embedding Structures, Norms, and Workflows

​During this phase, we introduced a set of simple but powerful structures to turn culture intentions into everyday practice:

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  • Led a full-day retreat to name what the team would release (perfectionism, chronic crisis mode) and what they wanted to carry forward

  • Co-created 90-day Team Working Agreements as clear, behavior-level commitments the whole team could reference

  • Introduced new frameworks and protocols to clarify ownership and curb side-door requests that derail planned work

What Shifted for the Team

By the end of the six-month engagement, LAJC’s Development team had:

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  • Stabilized through a major leadership transition without losing momentum

  • Given the new Director a real runway, with a structured brief, team portraits, and clear 90-day priorities

  • Shifted daily culture toward more honest conversations about workload, capacity, and expectations

  • Established shared structures that reduce chaos and make responsibility visible

While the full revenue picture will emerge over time, these culture and workflow shifts are already strengthening fundraising execution, helping the team navigate complex multi-faceted campaigns and major matching challenges with more coordination, less scrambling, and clearer ownership.

Office Hallway Scene

MissionCraft Framework
Pillars

In this engagement, all four pillars—Clarity, Culture, Collaboration, and Capacity—worked together as the backbone of a more sustainable, mission-aligned fundraising operation.
Clarity
  • Roles, expectations, and honest assessment
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Culture
  • Norms and behaviors that support sustainable fundraising
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Collaboration
  • Shared language and structures for working together
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Capacity
  • Realistic workloads, visible trade-offs, and resilient systems
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