United Way of Northeast Florida – Stability Through Strategic Leadership

When a wave of leadership turnover hit United Way of Northeast Florida—including the CEO and VP of Community Impact—the organization needed a steady hand to maintain progress and realign its strategy. Wirth Works stepped in as interim senior leadership, holding the organization’s programmatic and funding work together while guiding it toward a sharper, more focused path.

Through team stabilization, open communication, and stakeholder engagement, we refined the organization’s grantmaking strategy, reducing funded partners by one-third to better target results around Economic Mobility. Together with the team and senior leadership, we redesigned the RFP process, helped shape a bold new investment in housing stability, and personally communicated with 17 agency leaders facing funding changes—always with honesty and compassion.

During this pivotal year, team turnover dropped, a visionary CEO, then VP were hired, and donor confidence held strong. Post-engagement, Wirth Works continued to support implementation and advisory input in execution, measurement and development of ongoing strategy iterations. This wasn’t just interim leadership—it needed adjustments and re-scoping that cleared the way for faster strategic shifts by incoming leadership.