Good morning + TGIF,

This week, we take a look at a nonprofit recovery story that reads like a lesson in what can happen when the right CEO gets back to the basics: tighten the operation, find fiscal efficiencies, rebuild the foundation — and somehow scale at the same time.

Beyond that, we highlight a local executive who continues to strengthen his case as a thought leader in the media space, expanding both his reach and the conversation around his work.

And finally, we close with a few Money Snacks that probably deserve stories of their own. They’re thought-provoking, a little debatable and, depending on where you sit, maybe even a few hot takes.

Let’s get into it.

Enjoy this week’s Toledo Money.

This week’s shoutout goes to Drew Beadling, Manager of PR at HART. Drew plays an important role at HART as a strategic communications leader, helping tell the story of the company and its people. Thanks to Drew for helping us share today’s piece on HART CEO Marc Paulenich’s new book. We appreciate you being part of the Toledo Money community! Thanks, Drew!

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Facing mounting financial pressure and growing demand, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Ohio rebuilt its operating model. The result? A leaner organization, diversified funding, and a reach that has expanded nearly sixfold.

In January 2020, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Ohio (BBBSNWO) was facing a difficult reality.

The organization was in debt, operating on an annual budget of approximately $250,000, and serving roughly 256 young people. Its financial challenges were significant enough that closing its doors was a legitimate possibility.

That was the environment Dr. Marvin Whitfield stepped into when he became CEO. Three months later, COVID-19 arrived.

The pandemic created another layer of uncertainty, but it also accelerated the need to reconsider how BBBSNWO operated, delivered services, and generated revenue.

Six years later, the organization looks considerably different.

Its annual reach has expanded to approximately 1,500 young people, with plans to serve 2,000 by June 2027. And after years of operating deficits, BBBSNWO returned to a positive financial position in fiscal year 2024–25.

The transformation offers an interesting business lesson: Growth can happen despite not expanding the budget. And… sometimes, it requires fundamentally changing the operating model.

Running a nonprofit is still running a business. We discussed this at length in a previous Corner Office Edition, “There is no mission without margin”, Shayla Bell Moriarty.

With running a non-profit there are employees to pay, facilities to maintain, insurance to carry, and programs to fund. Unlike a traditional business, however, the people receiving the services are rarely the ones paying for them.

Creating a unique financial challenge, especially when demand is increasing while available funding is declining. For BBBSNWO, those challenges became increasingly apparent in the years following the pandemic.

BBBSNWO | Financial Performance

Source: BBBSNWO financial records and IRS Form 990 filings.

Revenue approached $496,000 in fiscal year 2022–23, but expenses exceeded $524,000. The following year, revenue declined to approximately $373,000 while expenses remained above $466,000. The result was a $93,635 deficit, leaving the organization with negative year-end net assets of $19,065.

Whitfield recognized the existing financial model was unsustainable.

Rather than betting on the next major donation to solve the problem, BBBSNWO focused on restructuring operations, controlling overhead, and finding more efficient ways to deliver its services.

The FY 2024–25 Financial Turnaround

Source: BBBSNWO financial records and IRS Form 990 filings.

Despite another decline in revenue, the organization finished fiscal year 2024–25 with a $44,457 surplus. Liabilities declined from $128,169 to $74,583, and net assets returned to positive territory.

As Whitfield explained to Toledo Money:

"We did not spend our way into growth; we restructured our way into growth."

One positive financial year doesn't guarantee long-term sustainability. But for an organization that had been confronting the possibility of closure, the turnaround represented meaningful progress.

Here's where the business story gets particularly interesting.

While BBBSNWO was working to control expenses, the demand for its services was moving in the opposite direction.

BBBSNWO | Annual Youth Reach

Source: Dr. Marvin Whitfield, BBBSNWO. Figures include broader youth-development programming, not exclusively one-to-one mentoring matches. The 2027 figure is a projection.

The 2027 target represents approximately 33% growth over FY 2025–26 and nearly eight times the organization's original annual reach. That level of expansion required rethinking how BBBSNWO delivered its services.

Traditional one-to-one mentoring remains central to its mission, but Whitfield recognized that the organization needed additional ways to reach young people without building entirely new infrastructure around each initiative.

They also created opportunities to leverage existing community resources. Schools, libraries, healthcare institutions, workforce-development organizations, and local businesses already have facilities, expertise, and established relationships.

It's a strategy familiar to business leaders: leverage partnerships, control costs, and focus internal resources on the activities that create the greatest value.

BBBSNWO's transformation wasn't limited to controlling expenses.

Whitfield also recognized the financial risks of relying too heavily on traditional fundraising and a limited number of major contributors.

United Way had historically been an important supporter, but reductions in available funding created additional pressure on the organization. Inflation further complicated the situation as businesses and households faced rising costs of their own.

For BBBSNWO, the answer was diversification.

Its expanded portfolio of youth-development programs created opportunities to pursue funding from government agencies, foundations, corporations, and community partners with different priorities.

Programs addressing workforce development, education, behavioral health, and prevention can align with funding sources beyond traditional charitable giving.

Whitfield identified General Motors, Lucas County Mental Health, Harbor, and the Governor's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives among the organizations supporting BBBSNWO's work.

The long-term strategy is to build an organization that doesn't depend on any single individual, company, or grant. A more diversified program portfolio creates opportunities for a more diversified revenue portfolio.

Whitfield believes BBBSNWO serves five interconnected markets: youth, families, communities, public-service systems, and local businesses.

That last group is particularly important to the organization's long-term strategy. Today's young people will become tomorrow's employees, entrepreneurs, managers, and community leaders.

For Whitfield, youth development and workforce development are connected. For Northwest Ohio's business community, that creates an opportunity to view youth-development funding through a different lens.

Instead of treating contributions exclusively as philanthropy, businesses can consider how investing in young people aligns with their long-term workforce and community-development interests.

BBBSNWO's financial recovery is an important milestone, but Whitfield believes the ultimate measure of success isn't the size of the organization's budget. It's how effectively the agency converts its available resources into meaningful outcomes for young people.

The financial turnaround demonstrates progress toward stabilizing the business. The expansion from approximately 256 youth served to 1,500 demonstrates the reach of its broader programming.

The next challenge will be maintaining that financial stability while continuing to expand services and demonstrate measurable outcomes. BBBSNWO found new ways to operate, build partnerships, and serve a growing community.

And that's a business story worth telling.

Hart CEO turns a philosophy we heard in the Corner Office into a new book and brand framework

When Toledo Money sat down with Hart CEO Marc Paulenich earlier this year, one theme kept surfacing: great brands don't simply communicate. They create belief, action and, eventually, advocacy.

Paulenich is now putting a framework around that idea.

The Toledo-based executive and brand strategist will release Brand Mover: How to Lead Audiences from Apathy to Advocacy on October 27, introducing what he calls the Brand Movement Model.

His premise is fairly straightforward: companies have spent years optimizing impressions, clicks, awareness and conversion while potentially overlooking a more fundamental problem.

People may see the brand.

They may simply not care.

The model breaks the customer relationship into four stages:

Apathy → Awareness → Alignment → Advocacy

The important distinction is what happens after awareness.

Traditional marketing funnels frequently focus on moving customers toward a transaction. Paulenich argues that sustainable brand growth requires something deeper: alignment between what a company says, what it does and what customers actually experience.

Get that right, and customers can eventually move beyond buying a product toward recommending, defending and carrying the brand themselves.

That idea should sound familiar to longtime Toledo Money readers.

In our Corner Office conversation with Paulenich, he described brand as something closer to an operating system than a logo or tagline. Hart's strategy has centered on helping clients create belief and advocacy while remaining skeptical of whatever marketing technology happens to be fashionable at the moment.

The book effectively takes that philosophy outside Hart's walls.

Paulenich says the framework was developed through more than two decades of working through client challenges across industries including healthcare, financial services, hospitality, manufacturing, education, and food and beverage.

There is also a business story behind the author.

Paulenich took over as CEO of Hart in January 2026 following a years-long succession process with founder Mike Hart. The independent agency now employs nearly 100 people across Toledo, Columbus, Detroit and Washington, D.C., while maintaining its headquarters and operational center in Toledo.

That makes Brand Mover more interesting locally than another executive publishing a business book. It is an attempt to package intellectual property developed inside a Northwest Ohio company and introduce it to a much larger market.

And the central question Paulenich is asking businesses is probably worth considering:

Instead of asking “How do we reach more people?”

Ask “Why would they come with us?”

Brand Mover: How to Lead Audiences from Apathy to Advocacy is scheduled for release October 27, 2026.

Here are a few headlines we are snacking on

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