Member Spotlight: Kandace Vallejo
Jul 12, 2026
Member Spotlight: Kandace Vallejo, Strategy and Revenue Alignment for Funders and Nonprofit Leaders
Tell us who you are, who you serve, and what you’re focused on right now.
Through Remedios Consulting, I help grant makers and nonprofit leaders deepen relationships, capacity, and alignment. Through capacity building, strategic planning, and revenue strategy, I work with funders and organization leaders to move money to movements.
Right now, I'm working with the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice and their partners in the Louisiana River Parishes on establishing a collaborative strategy for the region. I'm also partnering with Border Workers United to craft a strategic plan, and working with the Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation to convene the grantees of their Texas Coastal Frontline Fund later this year.
What led you into this work? Share a specific moment or turning point.
I’ve worked in social movement organizations, philanthropies, and movement formations in Texas and across the US, for over 20 years. I’ve got a soft spot for doing the work in difficult places like Florida and Texas because there’s a sense of futurism when we organize in these conditions.
I’ve had the privilege of founding and leading
I started consulting because I have seen firsthand what it looks like when funders and their grantees operate collaboratively with strategic clarity: Experimentation increases, the work scales, and organizations thrive. My practice at Remedios reinforces the connective tissue between money and movements by helping folks collaborate across entities and missions.
What was one of the hardest parts of building your career or business, and how did you move through it?
The hardest part of my career was looking around at the organization I'd built and realizing that the job of an ED isn't all it was cracked up to be. I'd built a multi-racial youth organizing project centered on healing justice for youth harmed by parental incarceration and deportation. We had a team of 12, a budget of over $1M and we were finally earning 6 figure multi-year general operations grants. Our brand got a redesign, our youth leaders were training other young people, and our programs were scaling to take place in school classrooms.
It looked great from the outside, but I was super burnt out. I realized that I'd pigeon-holed myself into a role that I was excellent at, but ultimately did not enjoy doing. We also got crushed by COVID and the kind of internal conflict that has been eating movement organizations alive for years. I took a sabbatical, and eventually resigned, realizing that I had outgrown the role.
While it was the hardest career choice I've ever made, it allowed me to do a lot of deep thinking about the state of our organizations in the sector. While my work is now all about organizational strategy, it all ties back to the things I learned then.
A real culture of care and well-being is built on clear strategy, and being willing to say no to a whole lot of things. Saying yes to something requires saying no to something else. We have to be resolute in what we WON'T do, to be effective at what we WILL do. This hard lesson is at the heart of my consulting practice.
Describe a recent project or client win you’re proud of. What changed because of your work?
SCENARIO:
A legacy immigrant rights organization came under reached out for help with their fundraising. I told the ED, "I'm not your frontline fundraiser, and even if I did provide that service, you'd be underutilizing what I can offer you. Let me help you with your revenue strategy instead." We worked together for an initial 5 months, using my Story / Strategy / Systems framework. The TL;DR is that they more than doubled their budget and staff size within 12 months of that contract wrapping up.
They left with a customized Revenue Development Plan and toolkit that included:
- A tuned-up Story and Strategy - Delivered through training support and creation of key tools, like a Theory of Change, concept notes, and a pitch deck.
- A customized set of Systems - Built on what they already had, designed for their team's size and skill. It included things like a pipeline management document, a revenue tracker, and dedicated additional funds for them to contract with another expert who helped them to build needed financial systems to help them manage their resources better.
OUTCOMES:
The organization has now more than doubled their fundraising. Following a year when most organizations in our sector made difficult cuts and scaled back, this organization entered 2026 with their entire budget already raised, and twice the amount of multi-year general operations grants than the year prior. They're now:
- Protecting their work through the purchase of Director's and Officer's Insurance
- Maintaining organizational security through increased financial management processes
- Onboarding a dedicated grant writing team
- Increasing staff salaries
- Hiring for key roles to support organizational growth
- Researching benefits plans
-Implementing the organization's first ever Strategic Planning Process with me this summer
What are you building or refining right now?
I'm working on a really special project with the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, supporting five of their grantees in the Louisiana River Parishes (also known as "Cancer Alley"). Many of the organizational leaders there are direct descendants of formerly enslaved people, and they're on the frontlines of the climate crisis in so many ways, experiencing increased floods and major storms while also fighting the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. That work is rooted in cultural preservation, climate resilience, and mutual aid. It's an honor to have earned the trust to hold them in their strategic visioning process.
I'm also looking forward to the pilot launch of a dedicated communications capacity building fund for Texas-based climate organizations. That will get going later this year, and is the product of nearly two years of learning, landscaping, and ideating with funders and organizational leaders. It's always fun to watch a thing you've worked on go live its life and be of service out in the world.
What belief about consulting or nonprofit work has changed for you over time?
Hot take, but money doesn't solve all your problems in nonprofits. If you don't have the right systems and internal infrastructure, if you're pouring all your resources into the external work, you may be cannibalizing your organization's long-term stability, your personal peace and well-being, or both.
So even if your funders gave you half a million, you and your team might still feel burnt out and overwhelmed in a year. It's a tough thing to hear, but the silver lining is that there's ways to shorten the learning curve and avoid some of the hard-knocks.
That's what my practice is about: Helping folks establish sound strategy, while getting clear about the systems and leadership orientation that helps them to carry the load with more ease.
Connect with Kandace:
Website: www.remediosconsulting.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kandace-vallejo/
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