Grovewood Group
At Grovewood Group we work with nonprofits that are doing really important work and want to do it better. Not just more efficiently, with stronger funding streams and outcome focused programs, but in relationship with each other, their communities and those they support.
We help figure out what’s underneath by staying curious. Our approach blends implementation science and human-centered design. We know that organizations working on the hardest problems—child welfare, housing, public safety, poverty, advocacy – are staffed by people who care deeply.
The name Grovewood holds two ecologies in one word and is inspired by our cherry and wild leek farm. A grove of cherry trees — cultivated, intentional, structured, productive, sweet and abundant. And the woodland forest floor where the leeks are wild and slow, rooted in relationship with the canopy above.
Grovewood is...
Rigorous and wild.
Structured and emergent.
Measurable and felt.
Strategic Leadership for Nonprofits to Flourish
We hold the tension between nonprofit work that is emergent and urgent. We also know that strong strategy, trust, community and collaboration don’t just happen. They need to be cultivated, tended and supported. Grovewood group supports small to midsize nonprofits.
We provide leadership, disciplined operations, and creative program design for organizations looking to build, scale and become evidence based. Our approach combines human-centered design, implementation science, business strategy and nonprofit experience to build culture, operations, durable skills, leadership development and consistent program delivery.
Programs
We provide program design, implementation and measurement supports
People
We provide executive and developmental coaching for team members
Operations
We help build sustainable processes and help you see around corners
Strategy
We help turn vision into action
Scalability
We have an entrepreneurial spirit and can help you build and scale your organization
How We Work
Trust before strategy
No initiative moves faster than the trust in the room. Grovewood does not skip the relational groundwork to get to the plan. We move at the speed of trust — which means some engagements begin by slowing down before they speed up.
We grow strong and accountable teams by blending strategies from Dare to Lead, Executive & Developmental Coaching, Appreciative Inquiry and Change Management. We believe equity and access are part of everything we do.
Grow with, never for
Grovewood does not build solutions and hand them to organizations. We build with organizations — your knowledge, your context, your people. The capacity stays behind.
We grow solutions by listening and centering people at the core of the work. Capacity is tended not extracted.
Outcomes are not optional
Relational depth requires accountability. Grovewood holds both. Every engagement is designed with measurable outcomes, clear implementation milestones, and effective practices. Collaboration and data live together to create vibrant systems. We strive for excellence.
We know how important outcomes are. We can help you get clear outcomes, measurable deliverables and clear indicators.
The gathering is part of our process
We design every meeting, every workshop, every retreat as a purposeful encounter — not a template. We ask: what can only these people, in this moment, make possible? And we protect that possibility fiercely.
How we gather matters and is an important part of how we partner.
We believe in collective flourishing
We measure our work by what is more sustainable in the organization when we leave — more capable, more trusting, more clear, more honest. If we have extracted more than we have given, we have failed.
Grovewood Group is based on when nature is in balance. Rigorous and wild. Structured and emergent. Measurable and felt.
Grovewood works at the thresholds providing clarity, strategy and a pathway forward that honors the roots.
What We Value
The Honorable Harvest applied to consulting...
There are many ethical frameworks, for Grovewood Group, we have adopted Robin Wall Kimmerer’s guidelines for ethical relationship with the land believing it translates directly into our consulting ethics. These are not aspirations — they are commitments that shape how Grovewood structures every engagement.
Never take the first.
We wait to understand the ecosystem before we act. We listen to the organization’s history, its people, its attempts, its learnings. The first thing we offer is presence, not answers.
Never take more than half.
We honor the history and autonomy of every organization. We work alongside. The organization’s own people lead; we support. At least half of every process belongs to them.
Take only what you need.
Our engagements are surgical and efficient. We do not create dependency. We do not extend work beyond what the organization actually needs.
Every insight, every piece of qualitative data, every difficult conversation is named and used — not extracted and filed. Nothing gathered from the organization is wasted or abandoned.
Use everything you take.
Give thanks for what you receive.
Organizations trust us with their truth. That is a gift. We name it as such and honor it explicitly.
Share the abundance.
Grovewood is built collectively — knowledge, tools, frameworks, and practice are shared openly with the field, not hoarded.
Leave it more alive than you found it.
This is the measure of every engagement. Not deliverables, not hours. Is this organization more capable, more trusting, more honest, more resilient than when we arrived?
Our Best Partners
Grovewood works best with organizations and leaders who value:
• Willingness to build fun, authentic, honest and trustworthy relationships
• Confidence to step into conflict with humility, openness and empathy
• Seeing creativity and imagination as essential to innovation
• Willingness to get to know new people, new places and new perspectives
• Openness to feedback loops and Continuous Quality Improvement
• Recognizing feelings are an important part of the human experience
• Apologizing when you are wrong, make a mistake or hurt another person
• Understanding of accountability and the willingness to hold people to it
• Embracing math, data and statistics are part of our story
ABOUT US
Julia Donovan, MBA
Managing Partner & Founder
Julia Donovan is a strategic entrepreneurial and nonprofit executive with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of mission and systemic change — building organizations, leading teams through complexity, stewarding significant resources, and doing the patient, relational work that makes lasting change possible.
Her background spans small and midsize nonprofits with budgets of $1M - $12M with experience in development, volunteer management, program design, program implementation & evaluation as well as people and operations management. She has worked within disability, health care, government, community action, workforce and with kinship and adoptive families. She has managed teams across the country with 90+ team members. She has led two organizational change efforts and built highly effective teams.
Julia holds an Executive MBA with Nonprofit Certificate from Case Western Reserve University, with focused study in change management, organizational development, strategic leadership, and coaching methodologies. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, with a minor in Biology, from Hiram College. She is completing her coaching certification at Northwestern University and is Dare to Lead™ trained.
She has presented at national conferences, consulted on program design, and brought her expertise in kinship care policy, organizational change, and implementation science to audiences across the country.
Julia is also a hobby farmer — growing cherries, flowers, cultivating wild leeks, and learning from the land what it means to tend something over time, in relationship, without rushing what needs to grow. That knowledge lives at the center of everything Grovewood does.
Let’s connect
If you are a curious leader ready to scale impact, we would love to hear from you.
julia@grovewoodgroup.net