Trainings for Nonprofits
Since 2011, I’ve worked alongside nonprofit professionals who show up every day to serve their communities — often while holding the weight of others’ stories. These trainings are built to strengthen your organization from the inside out: helping teams understand trauma, communicate with empathy, and create environments that foster safety and trust for both staff and clients.
My approach is interactive, hands-on, and rooted in real nonprofit experience — not theory alone. Every session includes guided discussion, small-group exercises, and practical tools your team can apply immediately. Whether you’re looking to train new staff, refresh seasoned professionals, or embed trauma-informed principles across your organization, I can tailor a workshop to meet your goals.
Training Options
Trauma Informed Care Trainings
-
Trauma Informed Care Foundations
Perfect for frontline staff, volunteers, or anyone new to the concept. This session covers the core principles of trauma-informed care, common signs of trauma, and how to respond with empathy and boundaries. Participants leave with practical communication tools and a renewed sense of purpose in their roles.
-
Trauma-Informed Care for Administrators & Operations Staff
Behind-the-scenes teams play a vital role in creating supportive systems. This training explores how policies, workflows, and internal communication can either sustain or strain staff well-being — and how to redesign them through a trauma-informed lens.
-
Making Trauma-Informed Organizations (for Leaders & Managers)
Designed for those ready to go deeper, this training explores how policies, workflows, and internal communication can either support or unintentionally harm staff well-being. This workshop guides leadership teams through assessing organizational readiness, identifying culture and policy shifts that build resilience, and developing an action plan to embed trauma-informed values into every level of the organization.
Motivational Interviewing Training
-
MI Foundations
Learn the art of guiding — not pushing — people toward positive change. This session builds motivational interviewing skills for staff who work directly with clients, teaching how to ask the right questions, reflect effectively, and foster collaboration and trust.
-
MI as a Management Tool
Motivational Interviewing isn’t just for client-facing work — it’s a powerful framework for leadership. In this training, managers learn how to apply MI principles like collaboration, autonomy, and empathy to supervision and staff development. We’ll explore how to guide rather than direct, ask questions that inspire reflection, and create a culture where feedback feels supportive, not corrective. This session helps managers strengthen communication, build trust, and empower their teams to grow with purpose and self-motivation.
-
MI for Change Management
Change can be hard — even positive change. This training helps leaders and teams use the principles of Motivational Interviewing and Trauma-Informed Care to navigate resistance and resolve ambivalence around change. Participants learn practical tools for fostering open dialogue, affirming autonomy, and uncovering the “why” behind hesitation. By combining empathy with strategy, this session equips organizations to move through transitions with greater trust, collaboration, and lasting buy-in.
Other Trainings
-
Cultural Intelligence (CQ)
This training helps teams move beyond cultural awareness toward true cultural intelligence — the ability to work effectively and respectfully across differences. Participants learn practical tools for communication, self-reflection, and organizational practices that foster inclusion, equity, and belonging in every interaction.
-
Smart Allocations for Nonprofit Finance Professionals
Learn practical, transparent methods for allocating expenses across programs and funding streams — so your reports clearly show true program costs and help you get more of your core operations funded through your grants.
Customized Options
Every organization is different — and every funding stream has its own parameters. I can design custom workshops or multi-session series to align with your grant requirements, ensuring that training costs are covered and your outcomes are measurable.
Whether you’re seeking a single trauma-informed care session for your team or a long-term strategy to build a truly trauma-informed organization, I’ll meet you where you are.
Let’s create change from the inside out — one training session at a time
Trauma-informed care isn’t just a best practice — it’s a movement toward compassion, equity, and understanding. When nonprofits operate from that foundation, everyone benefits: clients, staff, and the communities we serve.
FAQs
-
It’s a framework for understanding and responding to the effects of trauma in various settings. It was developed to create safe and supportive environments that promote healing and recovery for individuals who have experienced trauma.
-
First off, everyone and every organization encounters trauma in some way. Trauma-informed care (TIC) isn’t just for social service agencies — it’s a framework for understanding how stress, adversity, and lived experiences shape how people show up at work and in the world.
Learning TIC helps create workplaces that are safer, more compassionate, and more effective (and with less turnover!). It helps staff communicate with care, avoid unintentional triggers, and support one another in reaching their full potential. In short, it’s about building stronger people — and stronger organizations — through understanding and empathy.
-
Yes! In-person is a great opportunity to connect with others and create deeper learning opportunities. I typically do trainings around the Puget Sound region, from Blaine to Port Angeles, to Olympia. I also do trainings outside this area, fill out the contact form and let me know what you’re thinking!
-
Yes. I prefer in person for my workshops, but there are a lot of follow up sessions for applying TIC and MI that are great candidates for virtual. I have a few standardized virtual 1-1.5 hour trainings as well. Fill out the contact form and let’s chat.
-
“Motivational interviewing (MI) is a collaborative, goal-oriented style of communication with particular attention to the language of change. It is designed to strengthen personal motivation for and commitment to a specific goal by eliciting and exploring the person’s own reasons for change within an atmosphere of acceptance and compassion (Miller & Rollnick, 2012).”
MI provides a strategic framework for building relationships through active communication approaches. It isn’t just for social workers or doctors, it’s useful for everyone to help us resolve our own ambivalence around change and support others in doing so.
