To change the world, you must start with beautiful data.
READY TO TRY SOMETHING NEW?
What We Do
Everything we offer centers around a resiliency mindset that transforms organizations and produces hope, delight, and confidence in your systems, data, and reporting processes.
Nonprofit Reporting Accelerator
Nonprofits spend a lot of time finding, collecting, summarizing, cleaning, and reporting their data -- usually without a data person to help.
This program builds up your data program and the team that collects and reports on that data. We make grant, annual, and board reporting easy to do and easy to trust.
This 12-month accelerator is by application only -- we can take on one new organization per quarter. After the first year, you can choose whether to keep going with us or have us train up your internal team to take over.
Nonprofits and Small Businesses are often started with an abundance of passion, a lot of focus on product and program development, and often a lack of confidence in how to best use data and technology.
We specialize in figuring out how to make the "drowning in spreadsheets" feeling go away while working within limited budgets and enabling you to mature your systems to support your mission and growth plans.
Our Roadmaps are actionable, practical, and do-able -- meant to create immediate wins and long-term gains.
We know how important laying a strong technical foundation is for growing nonprofits and small businesses. Most nonprofits and small businesses have a collection of tools that don't talk to each other very well and are scattered.
We help you streamline your systems and make them work better together. Your systems should support your team and processes, not the other way around.
We specialize in (and love) AirTable, Clickup, Asana, Apricot, Calendly, Quickbooks Online (QBO), and more.
One of our favorite roles is working alongside leaders and technical do-ers who are looking to grow their individual contributions and leadership. Sustainable transformation starts at the top, the bottom, and everywhere in between.
We aren't just another executive coaching group, we are tactical, no-nonsense, thoughtful, and kind.
We can also help you figure out how to write your technical / data needs into a grant proposal, help you with an RFP and bid/vendor evaluation, and coach you on how to confidently communicate with technical vendors.
We take a top-down + bottom-up + forward-movement approach that considers your entire organization before talking about specific technology, data, or other strategic recommendations.
THE SECRET SAUCE
The 5-fold Blue Tree Model
Identity & Vision Casting
A strong organizational identity and vision for where to head next dictates how successful and sustainable any type of change will be. Without a true-north, organizations can't say no to new ideas that ultimately take them off-course.
Culture Building
People-ing is hard. All change is hard, even if it is good. Burnout risk is real. Organizational culture should be life-giving, not soul-sucking. Without it, it won't matter how great your systems and data are.
Mobilizing
Empowering and up-leveling staff skills and tools makes forward movement possible. Transformation is a process that requires preparation, practice, empowerment, and passion.
Storytelling
There is nothing more motivating than progress. It should be visible, sharable, and felt by all. Shout it from the mountaintops, type it in the emails, capture it in 468 characters on a grant application.
High-Capacity Problem Solving
Sustainable, holistic change requires highly-skilled, high-capacity, holistic talent. If making systemic and organizational change was easy, it would already be done.
Blue Tree is the brainchild of Melanie Smith, Ph.D. -- former academic, forever problem solver and trusted advisor -- who realized leaders and do-ers in the nonprofit realm needed to build hope, confidence, and skills around data and technology in order to sustain their life-changing work in the world.
Quotes from our Clients Heroes!
You’ve knocked it out! I gave five priority problems to solve at the beginning and you’ve essentially given us solutions and recommendations. At this point, it would just be a matter of implementing the action items... you have pointed us in the right direction!
M.B., Nashville, Tennessee
...who we spent two hours getting her ecosystem design unstuck and moving forward again.
K.H., San Antonio, Texas
...one of our roadmap and coaching clients
I just want you to know how much I appreciate you! You continually inspire me, specifically how you lead with quiet confidence without being condescending and how you build trust and team and loyalty. You truly are a leader, not because of your title, but because of the way in which you make others feel. You bring out the best in all you interact with.
I just did two fist pumps and my brain is doing a happy dance...I checked the new numbers...and they MATCH all around. WOOOOO HOOOO!!
P.J., Tulsa, Oklahoma
...a leader who is no longer losing sleep over reporting woes
Are we a good fit?
Have questions about how we work? Reach out and connect anytime. We'd love to hear what you're thinking about.
Blue Tree exists to help nonprofits and small businesses set clear, life-giving strategy and turn it into action.
Lead From Hope | Delight in your Data | Grow Your Impact
Helping big-hearted organizations build greater capacity for impact since 2017.
