Impact Systems Builders is a not-for-profit (IRS approval pending) Organization that services other not-for-profit and for-impact organizations, where the social mission outweighs the desire to make money. Duane Rohrbacher created ISB because he sees a gap in mission-driven organizations’ abilities to create sustainable systems that maximize impact while minimizing burden.

After working for years and studying not-for-profit and for-good, mission-driven organizations, Duane created his own system to build systems for others. He named Impact Systems Builders with that title because IMPACT is really the goal. The systems that ISB creates for organizations follow one, important principle: they have to be sustainable.

Far too often, Duane and ISB sees consultants come into organizations, do great work, and leave because the systems and plans they put in place were not sustainable with the staff at the organization. So, a big part of Impact Systems Builders is the training and resources to ensure that the created systems are sustainable.  

To introduce ISB, we wrote a a twelve-part series on not-for-profit business development, where each article is titled: “How do I…?” The purpose of this twelve-part series is to introduce you to Impact Systems Builders and systems thinking. Many buzzwords are thrown around in the blogosphere about what it means to be a systems thinker, and ISB argues that systems thinking boils down to three, simple concepts: Motivation, Systems, and Discipline.

If an organization (or individual) can master motivation, systems, and discipline, that organization will worry less and less about the topics we will discuss. For an overview on the twelve part series, we have written two posts on…

• Human resources
• Donor relations
• Systems
• Business development
• Client relations
• Personal development

It’s very challenging to get to the point as an organization (or individual) where it feels like everything is under control. ISB believes that most things are completely under control of the organization as long as the organization follows the blueprint laid out through ISB’s business framework. Now, that does not mean that all organizations can succeed. There are plenty of mission-driven, not-for-profit organizations that lack the marketplace for their ideas to make the type of impact they want. ISB is not in the business of market research to determine if a market for an organization’s services exist. What ISB does it takes a skydiving class with an organization. Starting in the plane with a 30,000 view, we come in and see how things look from the top. Then, we jump.

While falling through the air of financial reports, staff and client interviews, strategy sessions, and systems’ analyses, we learn how your organization works from the inside out. After we’ve determined whether it makes sense to move forward with implementing the ISB framework, we step onto the ground and walk your organization through how to motivate staff and become motivated to create sustainable systems, and then how to have the discipline to use, maintain, and iterate upon those systems.