The Nonprofit Coaching Cohort: Growing Leaders and Community Sustainability

Accepting Applications now for Fall 2025

Our coaching cohort is designed to increase capacity through dynamic, local coaching and peer learning that is contexualized and current.

It’s for any nonprofit leader (and we use that term broadly: new directors, directors who have been at this for decades, emerging leaders and / or key management staff), that could benefit from accelerated growth and capacity building.

If you’re hungry, humble, and open to learning from others, this cohort is designed for you.

We prefer cohorts over more traditional 1-on-1 coaching for this reason:

Everyone gets better together.

Peer learning is the sharpest tool to growth (and to the cultivation of good leadership). In collaboration - designed spaces, you not only benefit from new strategies that are working elsewhere “in-the-trenches,” but you also defeat the lone-wolf syndrome that fuels burnout and hurts organizational sustainability.

You weren’t meant to do this alone: We’re better together, and our cohort will give you peer allies and a coach in-it-with-you for the long haul.

The Logistics

This cohort is 6-months long and launches in Fall 2025.
Sessions are biweekly, beginning in November and continuing through May 2025 (with a brief December hiatus), for a total of 14 sessions.

Cohort meetings will alternate in location throughout Chautauqua County. Participants are expected to attend in-person.
We encourage new directors, experienced directors, and emerging directors to apply.

We also invite key management staff to apply to further develop leadership and directorship potential.
The total cost per participant for this cohort is $1,865.

Financial support is available for qualified applicants through The Capacity Lab, Chautauqua County’s collaborative capacity-building engine. Eligibility is determined through the standard application process.

For questions or financial help, please contact admin@allyco.org to schedule a call with one of our team members.
We only allow 12-14 participants per cohort to maintain the intimacy and confidentiality that a growth group like this requires.

In order to do this, we vet applicants for readiness through the following application process:

1. Digital Application
2. Interview w/ Applicant Leader
3. Phone call to Supervisor or Board President.

Apply Now

The Benefits of Cohort Coaching

Eliminate isolation
Reignite the spark of leadership
Cultivate healthy habits / patterns
Grow in self-awareness
Re-locate as part of a whole (no lone wolf)
Strengthen staff + board relationships
Encourage mentorship of others (fortify internal structures)
Build colleagueship with other nonprofit directors
Create a safe space for confidential conversations on leadership blockers and obstacles
Introduce new tools / concepts to use
Activate horizontal learning (peer consultation)
Encourage internal promotion

Submit an application

Our Cohort Coach: Beth Oakes

Beth has been in nonprofit leadership for 22 years. Previously she served as Executive Director for 18 years at the YWCA in Jamestown where she was responsible for program development and administration, resource development, grant writing, development and implementation of community initiatives and donor engagement. She recruited and hired facility staff and provided direct supervision for ten management staff and oversight for eleven programs in seven sites. She managed the programmatic administration of a $1.3 million budget.

Currently, Beth is serving as Executive Director for the Child Advocacy Program where she continues to provide the same duties as above, with some expanded responsibilities in community engagement and mentoring / coaching. Working with a multi-disciplinary team of around 20-25 individuals from 5 different disciplines has been a new experience in collaboration and partnership for her.
She is a 2005 member of the Chautauqua Leadership Network and calls herself a life long learner.

Recently, Beth completed an 18-month long leadership cohort that taught her some new tools and skills for being a better leader and helping others achieve their goals. She is passionate about nonprofits and is excited to be part of growing leaders in her community.