Not to deliver a report. Not to hand off a strategy deck. To name what is actually broken, design the solution the ecosystem wouldn't have designed for itself, build the internal team that can carry it, and shepherd the work until it holds on its own.
The organizations that come to Go Advisory already know something has to change. They don't always know where to start. That's where I begin.
Who this is for
Foundations in motion
Whose grantmaking strategy, board dynamics, or portfolio model needs to shift — but don't yet know where to start.
Mission-driven organizations that mean it
Ready to move from gesture to genuine value — building a real social impact practice that holds up to scrutiny.
Funders ready to build
With resources, a cause, and a rough idea — carrying it from sketch to standing program.
The Go Team
Organizations that transform are the ones where the diagnosis is honest and the internal team owns the work from day one. The people who lead that work are already inside — two or three, with untapped passion and drive, who end up doing something beyond what anyone imagined at the start.
I join them as a member, not a director, and build the solution alongside them from inside.
Naming what is actually broken, not what is comfortable to say, opens up solutions that wouldn't have been visible from a distance. That's not a framework. That's trust doing what trust does.
I stay until the solution is genuinely theirs. Criteria-based handoffs, not timelines.
The Go Team in motion
We came in when a funder and an activist partner had a cause and a rough idea. Three years later it was a self-organizing network of 2,500+ members across 300+ grassroots organizations — running its own sessions, generating its own leadership, without us in the room.
On Trust
"Trust is not a soft idea. It's the mechanism that makes everything else possible — new programs, long-term partnerships, institutional change. I've spent twenty-seven years learning how to build it, protect it, and use it to help organizations do things they didn't believe they could."
— Gillian O'Neill, Founder, Go Advisory
About
27 years across for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Founder, Go Advisory. Founding partner, AGO. Former senior executive, IPG network agencies. $20M client relationships.
If this resonates, I'd welcome a conversation. gillian@go-advisory.co