Build a coaching program without blowing the budget

In this episode of Learning for Good, I sit down with nonprofit leader Melody Lam to explore how she built a coaching culture by training first-time managers to coach.

Coaching sounds like the obvious solution when new managers struggle to have hard conversations with their teams, but it often gets treated as a perk reserved for executives, and the cost of outside coaches can make the whole idea feel out of reach.

Melody’s experience shows that coaching does not have to start big or expensive, it can start with a simple model, a willing pilot group, and two minutes of practice at a time.

▶️ Key Points:

00:00 Why Nonprofits Need Coaches, Not Just Training

03:50 Melody's Path Into Nonprofit Leadership Development

07:39 The Benefits of Coaching Across Organizations

11:45 Building Emotional Buy-In for Coaching

14:39 Making Coaching Accessible With a Limited Budget

19:13 Piloting and Scaling Coaching Across the Organization

21:01 Coaching Results: From Technical Skills to Coaching Culture

23:42 Where to Start With Coaching (Even With Limited Time or Budget)

Coaching as the Desired Solution

Coaching has a reputation problem in the nonprofit world. Ask most leaders whether their organization needs it, and they’ll say yes. Ask whether they can afford it, and the conversation stalls. Executive coaching packages run thousands of dollars per person. So coaching often gets filed under “nice to have” and handed only to the people at the top of the org chart while first-time managers—the ones actually shaping culture on the ground—are left to figure it out alone.

Melody Lam, an organizational development leader at Goodwill Southern California, didn’t accept that trade-off. Instead of asking “can we afford outside coaches?” she asked a better question: “what if we taught our own managers to coach?” The program she built didn’t just fill a skills gap. It changed how the organization measures leadership success altogether, and it didn’t cost a fortune to do it.

That’s the focus of episode 197 of the Learning for Good podcast.

If you’ve ever felt coaching was something your nonprofit should do but couldn’t justify, her approach is worth studying closely because it turns coaching from an expensive perk into a scalable leadership habit.

Identifying the Need for Coaching

When Melody joined Goodwill Southern California from outside the organization, she started the way any good strategic partner should: she listened before she designed anything. She asked people what was challenging at work, what they missed, what they wished the organization had. The answer that kept surfacing was personal connection, which has disappeared as teams shifted to remote and hybrid work over the years.

At the same time, she noticed a pattern among the organization’s many first-time managers: people who had been promoted into leadership without ever being taught how to have a hard conversation, hold someone accountable, or coach through a performance gap. That combination—a hunger for connection and a real skills gap—pointed her toward coaching as the solution.

Implementing Coaching in Your Nonprofit

Melody chose to implement coaching by training managers to coach, not by hiring external coaches. This kept the solution affordable and scalable for the organization.

But Melody didn’t roll coaching out organization-wide on day one. She built a case first, using something the organization already trusted: a regular talent review process. That review surfaced where the real gaps were, and it gave her a data-backed answer when leadership asked, “What about our senior leaders? Don't they need coaching too?”

Her response was direct: senior leaders had largely already built those interpersonal skills. First-time managers, on the other hand, were on the front line of the team’s day-to-day experience, and they were the ones asking for help. So she piloted coaching training with a small group of managers whose leaders had already flagged the need, let the results speak, and only then expanded.

Melody’s sequence was listen, pilot, prove, scale.

She gathered the evidence and diagnosed the needs, brought a specific recommendation instead of a vague request for buy-in, and let a small, contained pilot make the case for coaching as the solution.

A Coaching Model Example

Rather than handing managers a rigid formula, Melody introduced a coaching model drawn from The Extraordinary Coach. She felt it was simple enough for a brand-new manager to use immediately, with enough depth that senior leaders could layer on more nuance later. Classes ran in person because the thing people said they missed most was human connection. Sessions leaned heavily on scenario-based practice (for example, real situations, like coaching someone through a safety concern, acted out in the room).

She also built in the small rituals that make new skills stick—applause, high-fives, low-stakes practice—to help build enough psychological safety that a nervous first-time manager would actually try the skill on their team the next day.

The Impact of Coaching in Nonprofits

For years, Melody’s nonprofit measured leadership success almost entirely through technical performance and hitting goals. But that didn’t account for interpersonal skills, and that gap often shows up as disengagement and team conflict.

Once coaching became part of the leadership conversation, the definition of a “successful leader” started to shift. It was no longer just about output. It was about whether someone could coach their team toward it.

To learn more about coaching in nonprofits, tune into episode 197 of the Learning for Good podcast.

Additional Resources Just for You

Other Helpful Podcast Episodes:

Subscribe to the Nonprofit L&D Insiders.

Join the Nonprofit L&D Collective.

Support the Learning for Good Podcast

Become a sponsor.

Ask a question or suggest a topic.

We love hearing from listeners!