Accessible executive capability and capacity, inside your not-for-profit.
Diversify your income and partnerships, and take off towards your boldest ambitions.
What’s keeping you grounded?
Your current funding model cannot carry the future your mission demands.
Like most not-for-profits, you’re running on tied sources of income: short-term, restricted, delivery-focused contracts and program funding, with little room to invest in your organisation’s capacity, growth and innovation.
You’re not short on ambition. You leave the conference, the board away-day, the big conversation full of ideas for what comes next. But the ideas stay ideas. The work falls to you as the CEO to hold off the side of an already stretched desk, and when growth is everyone’s priority and no one’s job, the ambition is there but the room to act on it isn’t.
And it isn’t for lack of opportunity. You’re the specialists in what you do, beautifully placed to lend your expertise to our greatest challenges, and that depth has built you real standing: strong relationships across your community — donors, business, government — and a trusted brand. The pipeline is already there, sitting dormant in your ecosystem. What’s missing is the capacity and capability, at the level it takes, to see, connect, convert and build on the opportunity in front of you.
Here’s the catch. The investment it takes to build that capability is constrained by the very model you’re trying to move beyond. And even if you free up the funds, the job itself is poorly understood, or the seniority it demands is often beyond what your salary bands can reach.
Because at this point of inflection, the work isn’t a single lever. It isn’t just philanthropy, or grants, or fundraising, or corporate partnerships.
It takes range.
The ability to see across every funding stream and move between donors, partners, funders and government to build the whole picture. Reach for one specialist, or one silo, before that foundation is in place, and you risk slipping back into the very cycle you’re working to break free of.
And now is exactly the moment it matters. Capital is moving at a scale the sector has never seen, and readiness is what decides who catches it.
Your pipeline exists. It’s just not yet activated.
How I get you cleared for take off.
I bring the capability to diversify your income and strategic partnerships across the full range of opportunity — from philanthropy, corporate and community giving to government and commercial enterprise — and I build the capacity you keep.
This is fractional executive capability, embedded directly inside your organisation. It’s a cost-effective, accessible way to begin the journey towards a diversified, self-determined and sustainable income base, and to let the value prove itself as we go, so when you do build the permanent team, you know exactly which specialists to hire, and why.
Every engagement runs in three phases:
1. Discovery and Foundation
The first three months: listening, learning and mapping where the real opportunity lies, and building the strategy and roadmap for what’s ahead.
2. Activate, Build, Implement
Guided by what phase 1 uncovers — activating the pipeline, building the case for support and the systems to run it, and stewarding the relationships. This is where I do the do: not only raising income, but getting your organisation ready to receive and deploy it well, for the long term.
3. The Handover
Considered from the first day to ensure that together we build the lasting capability for the organisation to hold the function itself, so when the time comes the handover is planned and fully supported — into new capacity, or across your existing team — with lighter coaching available beyond it if you need it.
From the outset you gain momentum, clarity and direction, matched as the engagement continues by the foundations that make it last.
I work embedded, as a member of your team, collaborating deeply across the whole organisation to support your shared vision, alignment, and a genuine understanding of the why.
I work with organisations across Australia. Engagements are structured as a monthly retainer over a rolling six-month term, and designed to grow into a long-term collaboration of twelve months and beyond.
I hold two anchor clients at a time, each embedded and ongoing, so both get genuine executive focus. Alongside them, I may take on a select number of shorter, defined projects.
About Ruby Finlen Daft.
Founder and Fractional Executive
Global Executive MBA (University of Sydney) · Master of Conservation Science (University of Queensland)
I founded Clear Prop Co after more than 12 years in the not-for-profit sector — a career built on range, from the global to the deeply local and back again.
I began in conservation, and found my flair there for partnerships, storytelling and moving money towards a cause. I've carried it across conservation, international development, community services and family violence — in the UK, India, the Mediterranean, South Africa and across Australia.
Often in small organisations you wear every hat there is: strategy, operations, fundraising, program delivery, marketing and comms, governance and advocacy -- you name it. I've worked across every funding stream too — philanthropy, government, corporate partnerships, and the commercial and social-enterprise arms that can sit alongside them — which is what lets me help an organisation diversify in every direction at once.
Over this journey I've personally secured more than $6 million in direct funding and helped mobilise tens of millions more, across pipelines exceeding $200 million. Most recently, together with the CEO of a long-established frontline service, I mobilised more than $14 million from effectively a standing start, through major capital works, campaigns, pioneering bespoke design, and place-based programs.
I've co-authored a MacArthur Foundation 100&Change application that reached the top 100 worldwide — the only environmental project to do so — for a US$100 million grant. At Greening Australia I led national campaigns and partnerships with Sukin, Officeworks, Nespresso and triple j's Hottest 100, securing $1.7 million in corporate giving in a single year, up 50%. And alongside the paid work, I've mentored fundraisers and judged national awards, including the Whitley Fund for Nature and the Banksia Sustainability Awards. Different rooms, different scales — the through-line is range. But range alone doesn't move capital.
What converts is range paired with creativity and relationships — connecting those who want to change the world with those who can.
And that's why I built Clear Prop Co. I hold a specific skill set that can be applied to a specific problem, at a specific time, for a specific customer.
Clear Prop Co is for those extraordinary organisations thinking boldly about challenges none of us can solve alone, held back not by their vision but by a funding model that can't carry its ambition. And it's a real privilege to lend my skill and expertise to help them break free, and fly.
“Clear prop” is the call a pilot makes before the propeller fires — the signal a plane is cleared to take off. As the daughter of not one but two small-plane pilots, it’s a phrase I’ve heard my whole life, and I couldn’t go past it for a practice whose work is helping organisations take off and fly towards their boldest ambitions!
Ready to take off and fly?
Clear Prop Co is a catalyst for your long-term journey — towards diversification, self-determination, and a self-sustaining future. Every engagement I build is grounded in integrity and sustainability, and in setting your organisation up to succeed. If you’re ready, I’d love to hear from you, learn about what you’re setting out to achieve, and explore how I can help.
Reach out by email, give me a call, or connect with me on LinkedIn.