The team
To accomplish great things, you need a mastermind.
We own three separate domains — and we are backed by a deep bench of Salesforce developers, administrators, and Blackbaud and HubSpot certified professionals. Small but mighty, with the networks to serve nonprofits of any size.
Founder & Chief Development Officer
Brings tech-industry sophistication to the nonprofit sector — the level of rigor the space has been waiting for. CRO of technology companies. Scaled a startup from zero to over ten million ARR. Built the reporting system that became pipeline science. Rolled up his sleeves and lived the breakdown firsthand on the front line of a national nonprofit.
Co-Founder & Chief Operations Officer
Executive-level revenue operations leader. Most recently vice president of global revenue operations. Certified Salesforce administrator with deep HubSpot experience. Leads the systems and automation that make the CRM the team's ally, not its enemy.
Co-Founder and Interim CEO
Thirty years of nonprofit leadership as an Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer. Nonprofit compliance, governance, and data analytics. The domain expert who keeps the method honest.
About
Why we founded Operation Impact
I led an educational technology startup and built a repeatable, plug-and-play reporting system. In solo consulting I worked with technology startups, then some of the largest nonprofits on the planet. One thing kept revealing itself: the donation pipeline was broken — nine times out of ten, early. Poor data quality on inputs. No leading KPIs. Honor-system tracking of donor calls, meetings, and emails. Each staff member added another point of deviation.
I removed the deviation. Automatic capture. A user-friendly CRM. Leading KPIs. Metrics-based coaching. Pipeline stages aligned to a defined donor development process. Propensity and regression analysis for a forecast you can defend.
I wanted more experience in the nonprofit world, so I stepped off the C-suite and got on the front line — eighteen months inside a national nonprofit, living the breakdown without the authority to fix it. That is why I founded Operation Impact.
— Brian Marella, Founder
Why nonprofits.
Operation Impact exists to fix the gaps in the donation pipeline and train the team to run it — so together we expand collective impact.
We could have built revenue operations for any sector. The method works wherever a pipeline has to produce a number someone has to defend.
We chose nonprofits.
Not because the work is easier. Because the need is sharper — and because the outcome is not a larger quarter. It is a larger mission. Hundreds of organizations we have sat with are behind the curve in this domain: a CRM already paid for, a development team already stretched, and donation revenue that still cannot be forecast. The biggest gap in predictable, scalable donation revenue is here.
That is the work. We install pipeline science — fundraising revenue operations — so the CRM captures the truth, the donor life cycle has a conversion metric at every stage, and the team can be coached to the actual gap. When donation revenue becomes predictable, Executive Directors stop defending a feeling. They fund the mission on a number that holds.
The impact is indirect, and it is the point. We do not run the program. We make the engine that pays for the program trustworthy. Every gift that can be forecast, every officer who can be coached to the gap, every pipeline that no longer goes dark — that is how we multiply our effect on the people and causes that need help.
On the roadmap: a 501(c)(3), the Operation Impact Fund, by the end of 2027.
We are here to leave the sector stronger than we found it — and the world, by a measurable amount, better than we found it.
Book time to meet with us
The first meeting ends with one realization: whether you have a scientific pipeline — and a CRM that generates trustworthy leading KPIs.