We had the good fortune of connecting with Nancy Brimhall and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nancy, what is the most important factor behind your success?
Being real. In more than 20 years of consulting with nonprofits in fundraising and management, I have never advertised. My work all comes from referrals from previous clients. I believe in fully personalized service. I never pull out a manual and deliver by the book. It’s about changing up the game if they are going to succeed and finding new creative ways to solve their particular problem(s). That means getting to know how they tick, what people have to say about them and (we do a lot of interviewing and reporting) then mapping out the road ahead. If I am anything, I am creative and hardworking and I expect that from the team that I bring in to work with me. I think there is no other combination that will help anyone succeed. And besides, it makes for better relationships. You learn to quickly trust each other and make things happen together.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
In any career most people eventually find themselves at a crossroads of the realization that you could choose safety, a paycheck, and a savings account for your retirement or you could choose to live a life quite filled up with things you can be proud of having taped to the wall as yours alone. I always was the latter. For an extremely shy kid it’s a remarkable journey. The quiet time was filled with observing and just taking it all in, so when it was time to open the door and step out I knew that I was filled with some serious skills and that I had developed the fortitude to shape things differently. So, while moving into consulting was fairly easy for me, falling over an idea that would take my ideas and energy into a huge leap of faith forward was full of brick walls.

Drinking wine over evening meals with colleagues in Boston and Los Angeles, eating and talking with interns in the LA sunshine, all created a deep interest in finding a way to bring nonprofits into the 21st century of learning. I knew as a teacher (way back I have a K-12 lifetime California teaching credential and once taught adult basic education in Nome, Alaska and put a thousand nonprofit trainings in the can) that something wasn’t working well. The interest in lectures, books and videos was very low and the retention rate, much less the motivation to change up anything, was even lower.

To respond, we started reading about gamification in education and meeting Saturdays to throw out ideas. First, we designed a two-day live training that was in game format and blew our idea out of the water. We knew it worked. Problem was that it was quite expensive to produce and we could only serve 20. Luckily a brick fell out of the sky when interviewing a potential intern (shout out to Sasha Preston-Suni) who had just moved to LA from France. There, she had been working with a professor who had designed a success marketing course for business schools that received so much attention that he set up an office in Cambridge, MA to support the Harvard B School’s course implementation. We put our thinking caps on and came up with Change Lab®, an online platform to take on gamified and immersive courses for nonprofit staff and volunteers and those just curious about careers and knowledge.

Our first huge course is the cornerstone of pretty much every nonprofit’s big worry — how to find and engage with major donors; investors if you will, who have a great return for nonprofits. We followed it with several other killer gamified courses that will pop out of the cooker shortly and are now launching the platform at www.changelab.studio.

So much is changing and so much needs to. We are at the forefront and couldn’t be happier to keep launching some cutting edge engagement in virtual and augmented reality.

Our work has been driven by the passion of voluneteer colleagues, interns and the trusted advice of business mentors and accomplished game experts. The biggest shoutout of all to them!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The Griffith Observatory nearing sunset. Watch the planetarium show and then head outside to view the beautiful sunset over LA and pinch yourself that you have tucked that into your heart. It’s a beauty. Then I would head up to the Getty Villa and plan to be there all day, then on to dinner on the rooftop of the LA Proper Hotel (Cara Cara) or Per la. The next day take the funicular up Bunker Hill and back down to lunch at Grand Market and maybe cap it off with signing up for the Downtown LA Food tour the next day. If you are a good hiker, take the official Hollywood sign walking tour (2 hrs). Can’t leave So Cal without a two day drive up the coast to Santa Barbara or beyond. So much to enjoy in San Luis Obispo (spas and wineries), beach walking, shell shopping etc etc. And, I have always wanted to ride the swan boats in Echo Park. The next person that visits better agree to go with me!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I tip my hat to Gloria Steinem, who set me on the path to finding my voice, to President Obama who made me cry when he was elected to Madam C. J. Walker, who broke through so many barriers for women entrepreneurs; George Burns who always loved Gracie; and to Momofuku Ando, the inventor of Ramen Noodles, who said “To become a hero you must not only dream big, you must dream weird.” They all deserve a shoutout for their incredible fortitude and their very souls which shaped all that is inside me.

Website: www.brimhallassociates.com or www.changelab.studio

Instagram: @brimhallassociates or @yourchangelab

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-brimhall-b675a22

Other: TikTok is launching with @changelab

Image Credits
Logo designed by Ki Han Top right standing team shot: Photographer, Cham Zhao Kitchen team shot: Photographer Cham Zhao Intern group in hallway: Photographer Nancy Brimhall

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