Fractional COOs: The Secret to Growing Climate and Impact Organizations
Climate and impact leaders leading early-state organizations carry a lot: the vision, fundraising, finances, programs, and product development. This setup works for a while, but when the organization begins to scale, it becomes unsustainable. That's usually when a fractional COO becomes relevant.
What is a Fractional COO?
A fractional COO is an experienced operations leader who works as part of an early-stage team on a part-time or project basis. They have defined roles, responsibilities, and KPIs, and might even have people reporting to them. The key difference is that fractional COOs work across multiple organizations at once, bringing deep experience and an outside perspective to each engagement without the cost of a full-time executive.
For an early-stage organization, a fractional COO builds the scaffolding for the next stage of growth. They define the functions and actions needed to fulfill a vision, build the systems to sustain them, and create the processes that make it possible to eventually hire functional experts, hand off responsibility, and let those leaders build their own teams.
Signs An Organization Is Ready for a Fractional COO
They want to pilot a new product, program, or initiative and need a thought partner to move from idea to action.
They have hit a bottleneck in impact, revenue, or reach and are not sure how to move forward.
They have a bold vision but are struggling to translate it into an operational roadmap.
The team, especially leadership, is overwhelmed by the daily demands of running the organization and needs systems that don’t require constant oversight.
Notes from the Field
Fractional COO work has taken me across the climate sector— from nonprofits to investment funds to startups. My engagements with these organizations have spanned program design and deployment, fundraising, product, business development, and marketing. Most early-stage organizations don’t need a specialist in every function but rather someone that can move fluidly across all of them and build standardized processes to stand them up.
At Critical Ecology Lab (CEL), I'm laying the groundwork for the organization's next phase. In addition to owning the end-to-end planning and execution of the annual Eco Afro Futures summit (read more about that project here), I'm focused on initiatives that enable organizational resilience and autonomy. This includes piloting earned revenue streams, establishing an operating rhythm for the team, and taking lessons from existing programming to evolve it for greater reach and impact.
As a member of California Innovation Fund's founding team, I showed up wherever I was needed to establish and grow the organization, including building the due diligence process, sourcing investments, serving on the investment committee, and managing investor communications. Most notably, I built an incubator program that surfaced 18% of the investments for the flagship fund.
The COO-CFO Intersection
In many organizations, particularly smaller ones, the line between COO and CFO is blurry. As a fractional COO, I find myself also owning CFO-like responsibilities such as financial strategy and management. At CEL, I lead financial analysis, create and manage budgets, and set fundraising strategy. This financial grounding sharpens operational execution, connecting day-to-day actions with the longer term goals and ensuring data-driven decision-making.
Let’s Build Something
The ultimate role of a fractional COO is to drive transformation. We bring strategic vision, operational and financial expertise, and hands-on support to help organizations innovate and scale. If you're ready to take your climate or impact organization to the next level, book a free consultation and let's explore how a fractional COO can help you achieve your goals.