Matthew O’Grady is a recognized leader in nonprofit capacity building with 40 years of experience in the sector. He currently serves as a consultant on executive and strategic transitions, including service as an interim CEO. Between 2011 and 2016 he served as CEO of the San Francisco Parks Alliance. He completed the merger that created the Parks Alliance, then led the organization to the achievement of numerous political and philanthropic successes. Previously, Matt served as Organization Development Consultant with the Talent Initiative, a start-up (now part of AchieveMission) that builds the human capital capacity of select nonprofits to support rapid growth.
Matt worked with the Taproot Foundation between 2004 and 2010, most recently as the Vice President, National Expansion. He led fundraising efforts to support its geographic growth and service innovations. He guided the organization’s revenue strategies from start-up phase, with little revenue, to maturity with several reliable revenue streams, a $4 million budget, and over $20 million worth of impact annually. Read about Matt O’Grady Day at the Taproot Foundation here.
Matt served as Associate Executive Director of The Management Center between 1998 and 2004. In this capacity, he expanded the agency’s consulting practice eight-fold, and conceived & launched its Executive Search service. He was also in charge of TMC’s training programs. He designed TMC’s flagship program, Executive Director 101, which now has more than 600 graduates nationwide, and continues to be offered by CompassPoint. He oversaw the redesign of TMC’s oldest annual publication, its Wage & Benefit Survey, (now published as the Fair Pay Survey).
Through much of the 1990s, Matt maintained an independent consulting practice, providing strategic planning, governance development, and management assessments for nonprofits and their funders. His clients have included Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, BoardSource, KQED, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, LifeMoves (formerly Shelter Network), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the San Francisco Conservation Corps, and many others.
Matt has served on numerous boards of trustees, including the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies and Shanti, San Francisco’s renowned AIDS service organization. He served as Chair of Shanti’s Board from 1996 through 1998.
Matt currently volunteers as a Philanthropic Advisor with the EACH Foundation, which takes a highly innovative and egalitarian approach to philanthropic support of the sector. Read more here.
Matt is an avid cyclist, gardener, and hiker. He lives in San Francisco and rural Mendocino County, California with his husband of 26 years, Steve Van Landingham, and their springer spaniel, Abby.