Mercury Leadership Accelerator
Personalized support for leaders doing work with real stakes.
The Mercury Leadership Accelerator is a funded leadership award for nonprofit Executive Directors and CEOs, social entrepreneurs, and community builders whose work carries real opportunity and consequences for their communities.
Selected leaders receive up to a year of high-impact coaching and tailored strategic advisory support at no cost. This is an investment in the leader and in connecting their ambitions to their day-to-day practice.
About the Accelerator
The work is built around each leader’s real, live challenges rather than having them do abstract coursework or leadership theory. The focus is on helping leaders:
Clarify their direction
Pressure-test strategies
Strengthen execution
Navigate opportunities with greater confidence and discipline
Coaching and advisory support can include:
Leadership presence and resilience
Strategic clarity and prioritization
Fundraising and revenue strategy
Organizational design
Stakeholder management
Turning complex ideas into clear, actionable plans
How it Works
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Each leader is paired with a primary coach who helps them think clearly, make better decisions, and navigate complex moments with greater confidence.
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When appropriate, leaders will be matched with our network of specialized collaborators whose expertise can support a specific challenge or opportunity.
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Sessions focus on real priorities and pressing questions, such as board dynamics, funding inflection points, team restructuring, and strategic pivots—always centered on what needs to happen next.
Why it Matters
Strengthening the leadership and practices of people driving social impact work creates change that outlasts any single decision. It shapes how leaders make decisions, hold power, and design solutions resulting in ripple effects across their organizations, emerging leaders, boards, and broader ecosystems over time.
The Challenge
Leading a nonprofit is immensely difficult & often lonelier than it appears. Leaders face:
Funders to answer to
Staff and communities depending on hard decisions
Limited space to process complexity
This is not a personal failing; it is structural. Financial pressure makes investing in leadership support one of the hardest choices to justify.
The environment is also becoming more challenging. Rising demand and shrinking resources are well documented, as is the resulting burnout. The data shows that these challenges can be even more severe for leaders of color.
At Mercury, we believe in doing everything we can to support great leaders and help them navigate these challenges.
Who It’s For
Where We Help
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Clarity, prioritization, and disciplined execution.
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Organizational design, stakeholder management, human-centered systems.
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Fundraising, revenue strategy, and resource alignment.
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Presence, resilience, and decision-making under complexity.
Learn More
If you know an Executive Director or CEO at an important inflection point, consider nominating them. Nominations are reviewed on a rolling basis by a small group of Mercury advisors.