Climate-Smart Leadership
Coaching Engagement

Are You Seeking Clarity And Confidence On Your Climate-Smart Leadership Journey?

Navigating the rapidly changing world of regenerative and sustainable systems can be overwhelming, even for seasoned veterans. That’s especially true for professionals whose responsibilities span communications, grant-based fundraising, partnership development—or all three.

Having a thought partner who’s been down this road can be invaluable. An independent colleague who’s ready to listen and eager to help. A trusted leader with the experience to provide thoughtful coaching and perspective to assist you in your mission, personally and professionally.

Working With The Right Climate-Smart Partner Yields Perspective

Through the Climate-Smart Leadership Coaching Engagement, I'll be a trusted partner by your side helping you:

Seek and validate new ideas and provide answers to your questions—urgent and important, big and small, wide-ranging and narrowly tailored.
Secure just-in-time brainpower for same-day or same-week projects, ensuring you have a responsive partner able to help you quickly make progress on your biggest goals.
Explore strategy options together with me, considering possible solutions and anticipated outcomes, and evaluating which approach works best for you and your team.
Gain influence and career growth by investing in yourself and growing your expertise on timely climate issues within your organization. This builds your capabilities, capacity and credentials for good.

An Integrated Approach To Climate Leadership Enhances All Aspects Of Your Vision For Your Organization

As we work together, you'll experience 5 key benefits. You will:

Gain rapid sustainable climate change communications clarity, filtered through the lens my 10+ years serving as an editor and business executive in the industry.
Learn easy-to-apply strategies for grant-based fundraising and/or partnership development that can help you uncover new revenue streams, successfully position your organization’s value proposition and cultivate new collaborations benefiting your stakeholders and the environment.
Turn your passion for climate action into actionable steps that take your communications talents and put them to work for maximum effectiveness in your organization.
Experience joy in the sustainability work you do through meaningful and lightbulb-moment conversations designed to help you show up and lead with deeper purpose in communications.
Walk away with action steps, tips and recommendations after coaching calls to ensure you’re able to quickly apply what you’re learning and make progress for even greater impact.

The Market Needs Climate Leaders Like You Now, Not Later

In this environment, at a time of unprecedented financial investment in climate action from public and private sectors, it’s imperative that you not take a reactive, “wait and see” approach to making bold moves as a communicator and business development leader. At stake is your organization's social impact, its long-term legacy of doing the right thing, and the enormous market potential of values-driven product, services and programs.

Working with me will enable you to proactively set your personal and professional agenda, define what success looks like—and get the insights and perspective you need to make outsized and lasting change.

How We’ll Work Together To Boost Your Clarity And Confidence As A Climate Leader

When you sign up for the Climate-Smart Leadership Coaching Engagement, here’s what you can expect:

We’ll start with a diagnostic questionnaire that I’ll send you prior to our kickoff session. It contains basic questions about you, your role within your organization, and details about what you need to get out of our engagement to deliver outsized positive value to you.
Once I’ve received your questionnaire, you’ll get a link to book our first of four (4) 60-minute Zoom Climate-Smart Leadership Coaching Engagement sessions. Here’s how we’ll structure these sessions:
- Session 1: The Kitchen Sink – We’ll brainstorm and list out the components of a 3-part framework for our engagement. These 3 parts covering your organization’s marketing and communications activities are: 1) goals, 2) strategy and 3) projects you’re aiming to achieve over the next 12-18 months.
  - Output: A list of your priority goals, strategies and projects, ranked by “Must Get Traction Quickly” to “Important But Not Urgent”.
  - Purpose: This helps us determine how to invest your remaining sessions for maximum ROI as you take these insights and apply them to your organization.
- Session 2: Clarify Your Goals – We’ll work through your 3 biggest goals related to marketing and communications.
  - Output: A 2- to 3-page bulleted summary outlining top goals, insights on each, and potential next steps or paths forward to help you go further faster
  - Purpose: I want to understand what you’re after, what makes it important to you and your team, and how you’re thinking about getting there. In turn, I’ll provide you with insights and perspective from my 15+ years as a professional journalist, marketer and B2B social impact executive. My role is to help you examine your goals openly and critically, work toward big decisions and walk away confident you’re headed in the right direction.
- Session 3: Accelerate Your Strategy – We’ll walk through your marketing and communications strategy, identifying potential areas for quick wins and deep impact.
  - Output: A list of proposed action steps, reframes and/or opportunities to double down on strategies already serving you well and to dial up/pivot strategies you’d like to see take flight.
  - Purpose: I want you to fully appreciate what’s going well in your communications and marketing—and also challenge you to see potential areas for growth in your organization and in you as a professional communicator.
- Session 4: Reimagine Your Projects – We’ll take stock of everything on your plate in a given week and consider opportunities to streamline, save time, alleviate heartburn and otherwise walk away each day completely satisfied you’re making a big difference.
  - Output: A list of potential hacks/solutions to give you greater satisfaction in your daily role as a communicator, help your organization fully experience the benefits of the work you’re doing and make your social purpose work more rewarding and outcome-oriented.
  - Purpose: Your organization depends on you for marketing and communications leadership, including its social impact activities. Our final engagement closes the loop and focuses exclusively on you—and practical actions you can take each day to serve your organization’s goals, strategy and projects while achieving personal and professional fulfillment, knowing you’re making a difference.
After each conversation, I’ll follow up with an email containing any resources, readings or other promised materials. These will help you continue applying the principles we discuss. I’ll also include a link to book your next 60-minute session.
At the end of the engagement, we’ll set a 30-minute wrap-up and next steps call. I’ll seek your feedback about what you’ve learned, what opportunities you’re pursuing and how I might be helpful to you in the future.

What You Get When You Sign Up For This Engagement

Four (4) Climate-Smart Leadership Coaching Engagement sessions via Zoom with me, Silver Maple Strategies founder Nate Birt. Each session is 60 minutes in length, and I’ll send you directions to schedule each in under 30 seconds using Calendly.
Four (4) follow-up emails with resources and readings building on each of our 4 “Ask Me Anything” sessions.
A 30-minute wrap-up Zoom call where you’ll give me feedback about our engagement, next steps you’re planning to take and ways I can support your continued growth in climate action.
Free subscription to Secrets Of Social Impact Communicators, my weekly newsletter packed with insights, strategy and encouragement for leaders on the front lines of social impact work.

Your Investment In Climate-Smart Leadership Coaching Engagement

The fee for this 30-day engagement is $2,500, payable up front. Your 4 sessions may be scheduled anytime Monday through Thursday during the agreement period. Back-to-back sessions are absolutely permitted.

Why Should You Work With Me?

I have a track record designing seven- and eight-figure social impact programs underpinned by social impact communication. During my career, I’ve helped design, budget, fund, and lead the implementation of two multi-million-dollar social impact programs for U.S. farmers and ranchers focused on conserving soil and water, and scaling use of climate-smart agriculture practices on working lands. Another public-private partnership I organized including Fortune 500 companies and global nonprofits secured a $40 million federal award to advance climate-smart agriculture. Today, I apply those experiences to help clients accelerate massive social impact goals, build resilience to keep going in a community of supportive peers, and unlock the power of persuasive storytelling to capture imaginations, secure investment, and empower bold decisions.

Ready To Get Started?

I'd be honored to partner with you to advance your climate-smart leadership goals. Contact me at nate@silvermaplestrategies.com to set up a free 30-minute consulting call. Together, we'll explore how I can be most helpful to you.