For nonprofits, the people around the work, and the stories that come out of it

Keep the stories your mission creates.

Donors cannot support what they never get to see. MissionAligned helps nonprofits capture the impact stories that too often get lost, then turn them into donor updates, campaigns, reports, grant narratives, board materials, annual reports, and 990 narratives that deepen trust and support.

Give volunteers, board members, staff, supporters, partners, and participants a better way to tell the story of what they see, learn, contribute, and make possible.
Early access invitations are opening now.
Community organizers gathered around a wooden table, writing notes together in soft golden light

Why it matters

Don’t lose your mission stories to the feed.

Social media helps your story travel, but it was not built to preserve the evidence of your mission. A volunteer reflection, board member post, program update, or partner story may get attention for a day, then disappear into the timeline.

MissionAligned gives those moments a better home. Share stories, promote current work, and invite participation, while building a reusable record your nonprofit can use later for donor updates, impact reports, annual reports, grants, campaigns, board materials, and 990 narratives.

Promote the work now. Preserve the evidence for later.

Today

Marisol opened the pantry at 6:12 a.m. Three families were already waiting.

Yesterday

A board member rode the South Route and saw why delivery is not optional.

Last week

A grocery partner added 42 produce boxes after seeing the waitlist.

From moment to mission evidence

Before the pantry opened, three families were already waiting outside. A volunteer note becomes evidence of demand, trust, and the delivery gap your next grant report needs to explain.

Donor update · Board packet · Grant narrative · Annual report · 990 Part III

Why MissionAligned

The name is the method.

Mission-driven work thrives when the people around it move in the same direction. MissionAligned is a network built around four kinds of alignment — the shared footing that turns scattered effort into durable change.

Aligned around

Purpose

Nonprofit workers, board members, supporters, and volunteers — united by the missions they serve.

Aligned around

Learning

Practical lessons, pilot programs, and templates from the field — shared so they travel farther.

Aligned around

Recognition

The staff, volunteers, and supporters behind every mission — named, spotlighted, and celebrated.

Aligned around

Change

What works in one community can strengthen the next — compounding into lasting social change.

From the feed

Two kinds of content. One feed.

MissionAligned brings together useful nonprofit insights and the human stories behind the work. Some posts reveal patterns from nonprofit activity. Others come from the people closest to the mission.

Latest posts

Useful observations from nonprofit activity, public filings, programs, partnerships, and operating models. Field Notes help people see what is working and what other organizations can learn from it.

Image for NC TechPaths' rural tech-jobs strategy: a downtown building and a community-college handoff
Field Note1 month ago

NC TechPaths Inc

NC TechPaths' rural tech-jobs strategy: a downtown building and a community-college handoff

NC TechPaths (EIN 87-2625452) reported $421K in 2023 revenue with one stated mission: "helping our rural neighbors gain access to technology jobs and remain in their home region." In 2023 the org bought a building in downtown North Wilkesboro and named it The Masthead. They call it the first "Rural Tech Outpost," part workspace, part convening spot for anyone in Wilkes County interested in tech or entrepreneurship. The same year, they handed off their talent pipeline. In October 2023, NC TechPaths transferred its program for recruiting and coaching learners into software development, network management, cybersecurity, and IT support to Wilkes Community College. Both in the same fiscal year, with six employees on staff.

  • Programs
  • Operations
  • Geographic reach
Image for Gifts to Give Inc — 12,500 volunteers, no paid staff, $395K budget
Field Note1 month ago

Gifts to Give Inc

Gifts to Give Inc — 12,500 volunteers, no paid staff, $395K budget

Found this in their 2023 Form 990. Gifts to Give, in Acushnet, MA, brought in $394,907 last year, all of it from contributions, and spent $0 on fundraising. Paid employees: zero. Volunteers: 12,500. Families drop off gently-used clothes, toys, books, and other things they no longer need. Kids do the sorting and packing at the org's "repurposing factory." Local agencies serving homeless or in-need children order the finished bundles. What got me about this is that children serve children here, with the adults mostly out of the way. The 990 calls it "tangible philanthropy and big citizenship." I'd just call it the program. The 12,500-volunteer count almost certainly includes every child who passed through the factory on a school trip, not weekly regulars. The $0 fundraising line probably means those costs are buried in program services. But the shape of the org is real, and it's not common.

  • Volunteer leverage
  • Operations
Image for Steppingstone Center named its teaching method after the founder's father, Kenji Akaba
Field Note2 months ago

Steppingstone Center

Steppingstone Center named its teaching method after the founder's father, Kenji Akaba

Found this in Steppingstone Center's most recent 990, Plymouth, Michigan. The school serves gifted learners K-8 — a population that often gets lost in age-based grade assignment, since cognitive development and physical/social maturity rarely line up. What caught me: their entire pedagogical method has a name and a person attached to it. They call it the Akaba Model of Differentiated Education, named after the founder's father, Kenji Akaba. The method has "evolved over years of teaching gifted learners at Steppingstone," in the school's own words. It's built to flex with each student rather than march them forward by age. Most schools quietly run on a generic philosophy. Steppingstone formally credits a single person — the founder's dad — every time they describe what they do. That's a different kind of institutional memory. If you run a small mission-driven school or training org, this is worth thinking about: is the way you teach distinctive enough to name? And whose intellectual lineage built it? Naming methods after the people who actually shaped them is an act of remembrance that's easy to skip.

  • Programs
Image for Express Carriers Association memorial scholarship for women in business honoring Carrie Ehlers
Field Note2 months ago

Express Carriers Association; Greater Milwaukee Community Foundation

Express Carriers Association memorial scholarship for women in business honoring Carrie Ehlers

Found this in Express Carriers Association's most recent 990, Carlsbad, California. ECA is a trade group for light-and-medium freight carriers — not a sector you'd guess would be doing gender-equity scholarships. But here's what they did: they routed money to the Greater Milwaukee Community Foundation to establish a scholarship fund in memory of Carrie Ehlers, former president of the Express Carriers Association. The fund supports female college students pursuing a degree in business. That's straight from the 990. A few things stand out. First, trucking and logistics are heavily male-dominated industries — the trade association explicitly chose to memorialize their former president by helping more women enter the broader business world, not just the trucking world. Second, they didn't try to administer the scholarship themselves. They handed the endowment to a community foundation that already does this well. That's a smaller-org move other trade associations can copy. You don't need a development department to set up a named legacy fund. You need a community foundation partner and a clear honoree.

  • Fundraising
  • Programs
Image for Facility rental as the operating engine for asset-rich nonprofits
Field Note2 months ago

Cedarburg Landmark Preservation Society; Central Vermont Memorial Civic Center

Facility rental as the operating engine for asset-rich nonprofits

Cedarburg Landmark Preservation Society (Cedarburg, WI) reports $317,425 in total revenue. Historic-building rental: $310,544 — 98% of the operation. Their preservation work is funded almost entirely by renting out the buildings they preserve. The asset pays for itself. Different sector, same template: Central Vermont Memorial Civic Center (Montpelier, VT) reports $307,647 in revenue, $295,163 (96%) from facility rental. Mission: an athletic and cultural facility for Vermont residents. The model flips the asset on the balance sheet. The building isn't a cost center waiting on grants. It's the product.

  • Operations
  • Finances
Image for Specialty journal / publication subscription as primary revenue
Field Note2 months ago

Association of Clinical Scientists; Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography

Specialty journal / publication subscription as primary revenue

Association of Clinical Scientists (Houston, TX) reports $252,209 in total revenue. Journal revenue: $193,148 — 77%. Contributions are just 11%. Mission: promote education and research in clinical science. Same template at 10x scale: the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (Washington, DC) reports $2.94M in revenue, with $631,798 (22%) from journal sales and subscriptions, plus more from membership. The mechanics: niche academic or professional groups publish their field's flagship journal. Institutional libraries subscribe. Members pay for access. The journal is simultaneously the field's intellectual record and the org's revenue model.

  • Programs
  • Finances

MissionAligned is

Community building with a purpose

MissionAligned helps nonprofits capture the moments that usually get scattered across emails, social posts, board updates, grant reports, and hallway conversations — and turn them into a reusable record of the work happening now.

A small diverse group of community members gathered in conversation

How MissionAligned works

  1. Capture the mission moment

    Post a program update, need, story, milestone, lesson, or reflection from the work as it happens.

  2. Invite the people around the work

    Volunteers, board members, staff, supporters, partners, and participants can add their perspective and help show the mission from more than one angle.

  3. Share the story where it matters

    Promote stories through your existing channels while keeping them connected to your Mission Profile.

  4. Reuse the evidence later

    Turn stories into donor updates, impact reports, grant language, board materials, campaigns, annual reports, and 990 narratives.

What you get

Always free

Free to everyone, forever

  • A simple annual summary to support Part I, Part III, and Schedule O of your 990
  • A simple ongoing dashboard to view your impact in real time
  • A shared space to strengthen community, visibility, and engagement around your mission

Deeper support

With membership

  • Customized reports to support 990 reporting
  • On-demand custom impact reports tailored for grant submissions and donor reports
  • Strategic planning and impact management dashboards, plus board checklists
A group of nonprofit volunteers and community members standing together

Why this works

Nonprofits are already sharing stories across channels. MissionAligned gives those stories a place to connect, invites more of the people around the work to contribute, and turns that activity into something more useful for community building, visibility, reporting, and planning.

Reusable mission content

From story to report.

Every story shared on MissionAligned can become part of a reusable mission record. Over time, that record can support donor updates, impact reports, board materials, grant narratives, annual reports, campaigns, and 990 storytelling.

Instead of waiting until the end of the year to reconstruct impact from memory, nonprofits can collect mission moments as they happen. The result is a more human, specific, and current picture of the work.

Use MissionAligned stories for

  • Donor updates
  • Impact reports
  • Annual reports
  • Board materials
  • Grant narratives
  • Campaign pages
  • Volunteer recognition
  • Partner updates
  • 990 narratives

One story, written once, can quietly carry the mission across every audience that needs to hear it.

Where it fits

Built for the layer your other tools miss.

Most nonprofit tools manage records, tasks, transactions, or documents. MissionAligned helps preserve the living story of the mission: what happened, who helped, what was needed, what changed, and why continued support matters.

  • CRM

    What it manages

    Donor, supporter, volunteer, and constituent records.

    What MissionAligned adds

    Stories, needs, participation, and human context that make donor relationships easier to understand and renew.

  • Social media

    What it manages

    Reach, attention, and distribution.

    What MissionAligned adds

    A reusable record of mission evidence that does not disappear into the feed.

  • Board portal

    What it manages

    Agendas, minutes, votes, and governance documents.

    What MissionAligned adds

    Current stories board members can share in donor conversations, introductions, and community advocacy.

  • Fundraising platform

    What it manages

    Donations, campaigns, and payment flows.

    What MissionAligned adds

    The story context that helps people understand why giving again matters.

  • Nonprofit databases

    What it manages

    Institutional records, filings, profiles, and financial data.

    What MissionAligned adds

    Active mission signals from the work happening now, not only institutional records from the past.

When the story is missing, every donor conversation has less to build on.

Why join early

Be part of what MissionAligned becomes.

Early access isn't a waitlist. It's an invitation to shape a network that treats nonprofit work with the seriousness, warmth, and care it deserves.

“Nonprofits already have the relationships, the trust, and the ground-level knowledge. What's missing is a system designed to connect that strength to systemic change.”

Jason Prunty

Founder of MissionAligned

Discover ideas that are working

Practical lessons, pilot programs, and templates shared directly by the organizations running them.

Celebrate the people behind impact

Spotlights for staff, volunteers, board members, and donors whose steady work makes missions possible.

Help shape a new network

Early members influence the norms, tools, and feed of a network built in service of the field.

Get early access to AI tools

Future insight tools trained on real nonprofit impact, service, and learning — with you in the loop.

Early access

Request your invitation

Tell us how you're connected to nonprofit work. We'll tailor your early access and reach out when your cohort opens.

01Choose your pathway
How do you show up for nonprofit work?

MissionAligned tailors your feed, prompts, and connections to the role you play today. Choose the pathway that fits — we'll meet you there.

Inside the mission
Alongside the mission

MissionAligned helps the people, ideas, and stories behind nonprofit work move farther together.

  • Sustain the work.
  • Amplify the impact.
  • Create lasting social change.