We have worked with Patton for over a year in our fund raising efforts. We didn’t have much fund raising experience before hiring Patton, so he helped us set up everything we would need for success from start to finish. Patton helped us establish a realistic goal, and with his guidance, we both met and then exceeded that goal, which was many, many times the amount we ever raised before. Patton’s wisdom, experience, and deep insight into how fund raising works was enormously impactful for us. He was able to help us on every level of the process, from broad strategy and conceptual planning to helping us conceive and execute the smallest tactical tasks. He helped us plan our presentations, establish our timelines, and write our appeals. He was always a clear and pragmatic thinker and was able to adapt general fund raising theory into level headed concrete projects and assignments that fit our unique organization. When he spoke to our donors he inspired confidence in us and helped educate them about why we were doing what we were doing. He led our steering committee with unusual sensitivity and skillfulness, welding our group into an effective team. We are planning to work with Patton in the future to set up an ongoing professional and organization wide fund raising department. Without Patton’s help, we might not have survived the tumult of the pandemic and we appreciate his contribution immensely.
– Rukmini Chaitanya Director of Programming, Marketing, and Fund Raising, Sivananda Ashram
Bahamas
“Patton came to our organization at a pivotal time of change that required the skills and expertise of someone who has experienced all sides of the non-profit organizational world. Not only did he masterfully guide us through a successful retreat that set out our shift from a working board to a governance board but also led us to three achievable goals for our next 18 months that anchored us all in a unified direction. We all left feeling connected to each other and to our work together. I have personally attended over five retreats for this organization and must say this was by far the most productive and skillfully directed one I have yet experienced. Patton has a way of cutting to the point and breaking things down so that everyone really gets it. It is a rare talent! We felt incredibly lucky to have worked with Patton at one of the most important junctures for our organization. “
-Hilary Garivaltis, Executive Director
National Ayurvedic Medical Association
“Patton Sarley has been a treasured business and strategic planning advisor for us since the launch of our media company seven years ago. He speaks with a quiet conviction from a deep well of experience, often with refreshing humor. Not one to fall prey to convention, Patton asks questions that provoke creative responses to the tough business challenges we all face. Having him on your side is like having the best utility tool in your pocket; there are just so many circumstances where he presents the perfect solution.”
– James Gimian, Executive Director of the Foundation for a Mindful Society and founding Publisher of Mindful magazine; Mindful.org
“Sitting down with Patton Sarley was a moment that changed the entire trajectory of the Holistic Life Foundation. His guidance and follow-up mentoring helped us grow our organization from the three of us, to an organization that employees over 40 people, a budget of over $2.5 million, and has an international reach.”
—Ali Smith | Executive Director | Holistic Life Foundation
“As co-creators of the 1440 Foundation and 1440 Multiversity, we are pleased to write this letter of endorsement for Patton and Ila Sarley, whom we have had the pleasure of working with for over 9 years.
Patton and Ila were significant contributors to the strategic planning and operational launch of the 1440 Foundation and the 1440 Multiversity. We appreciate both their substantive technical help and our close relationship with them; their efforts were invaluable in helping to bring to life the vision for the 1440 Foundation and 1440 Multiversity. We heartily recommend their services.”
—Scott and Joanie Kriens | Co-Founders | 1440 Foundation & 1440 Multiversity
Having been a professional accountant, business owner, business executive and environmental activist over many years, I have participated in numerous strategic planning processes involving for-profit and not-for profit organizations. I recently had the opportunity to work with Patton Sarley as he led an intense two-day planning process for an organization that vowed to substantially re-create its basic business plan in order to achieve sustainability. He deftly managed the process with all involved from beginning to end, keeping us on task while diplomatically and effectively pushing back when needed with the charismatic leaders of the organization and others around the table. I was especially impressed with his ability to maintain focus and perspective as the group dissected difficult issues, leading us to the identification of no-nonsense tasks and studies necessary to accomplish the robust plan we derived. This experience stands for me as one of the best of its type that I have been involved with, and I feel that this organization now has a new opportunity to succeed.
—David H. Harman | Harman, Inc.
Thank you for your masterful leadership during our business planning retreat. I’ve been to a lot of planning retreats and it’s unusual to stay energized and focused while doing so much. You led us through an impressive amount of challenging work fraught with “bottlenecks and landmines” by calling on our individual strengths, listening intently, then skillfully problem-solving. I was most impressed with how you led with a gentle confidence pulled from a deep and extensive understanding of organizational growth to deliver everything we asked for and more. It was a delightfully rewarding two days that set us on a steady and secure path for our next steps.
—Geraldine Plato | President/CEO | Strawbridge and Martha Wilson Young Foundation
Patton Sarley, has been a key consultant to the success of the non-profit holistic education organization that started in 2012. He always brings high integrity, honesty, amazing knowledge in his field, and a sincere understanding of our working sessions. In 2018, Patton led four executive team leaders in a two-day strategic planning retreat to bring fresh, focused outcomes for the organization’s next level of development. His process that first day was very organic in how we all brought things to the table. On the final day he skillfully focused on clarifying details and deliverables. We were all admittedly tired but extremely impressed and satisfied by how much we accomplished in our two days together.
—Shelli Stanback | CEO | Oshun Mountain Sanctuary
“Patton is a proven believer and doer in nonprofit service work, and that is a rare combination. This makes his aid both strategic and eminently practical. It is thanks to his assistance in our strategic planning and organizational development and most importantly his vision for the possibilities inherent in the Crim Identity and mission that our work in Flint is even happening.
Going from zero engagement in the mindfulness field to now serving as the ‘Flagship’ City in the National Mindful Cities Initiative is literally due to Patton’s belief in our work and his unique ability to help us assess and capitalize on opportunities. He’s just one of the good guys!”
—Gerry Myers | Chief Executive | Crim Fitness Foundation
I have found it rare in my 35 years of career that the person I am reporting to is also someone I want to emulate, but that is exactly what happened in my experience with Ila Sarley as my Director. Throughout the 4.5 years of our job side by side, Ila has demonstrated a leadership steeped in deep listening, seasoned communication, and a laser focus on our goals as a team. In our years together, we launched a 75 acre learning facility in the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains and successfully managed to bring some of the most influential and innovative speakers of our time to the public, solely due to Ila’s reputation in the industry and the team she assembled to take on the task. Ila is a visionary, innovator, and absolute joy to work with and be led by. I am grateful for our years together.
—Susan Freddie | Senior Workshop Programmer | 1440 Multiversity
“During the time I worked with Patton, he has seamlessly engaged with me as a coach and mentor, a strategist, and a visionary. I have sought his guidance on tactical business needs related to building our evidence base, leveraging an internal culture of achievement, selecting collaborative partners to help us scale, developing a plan to target other funders, and creating a well-functioning board of directors. As a result of this engagement, we have expanded our portfolio of programming, increased our raised and earned revenue, added thousands of schools to our current customer list and grown our impact, from reaching a few hundred students in 2014 to reaching nearly 1 million students with daily mindfulness practice in 2020.
What has always been profound in my interactions with Patton is how his depth of knowledge about human nature so fluidly informs his understanding of business strategy. With that lens, he was able to quickly identify the root of every challenge we faced and identify key opportunities for growth. He became a trusted partner as we created a path forward through those challenges and expanded to capitalize on those opportunities.
Beyond his individual work with our organization, he was guiding and leading the work in the mindfulness field before it was even a field. Patton has worked tirelessly to bring people together, to help them find common ground, and to share a vision of transformation. With gentleness and urgency, he provided a forum for communication and collaboration. He has helped us and many others consider the larger implications of this work, from a place that is both grounded in a deep personal practice and a sense of vast possibilities. The commitment, patience and leadership he exhibits, in working with dozens of business leaders at a time in these settings, is nothing short of remarkable to witness. I’m grateful that our work together continues!”
-Laura Bakosh | Co-Founder | Inner Explorer
I have worked in nonprofit executive management for over 20 years at large universities with ample resources and now at a lean start-up with strong vision and solid year-over-year growth, but limited resources requiring keen decision-making. We have worked with Mr. Sarley this year as an executive coach for our leadership team and have just completed a very successful multi-day strategic planning process with him as well. (read more….)
As a coach, Mr. Sarley was able to bring forth the inherent qualities and expertise of each individual as well as introduce new concepts for the growth of our executive team relationship that feel equally supportive both personally and for our business. We easily built trust with Mr. Sarley and his acumen exceeded our expectations, therefore we continued to engage his services through our recent strategic planning process for several days.
At one point half-way through the first day, many of us were reluctant to believe that we would likely make it through all the content we needed to cover. This is because Mr. Sarley allowed such a full and necessary unpacking of issues to unfold in an organic, yet specifically guided way, that suddenly we were eight hours into a 12-hour day and had laid everything on the table necessary to build a solid foundation in our strategic planning moving forward.
He guided us with gentle aplomb, humor, and candor and by the end of our process we had met all the goals set forth. Truly remarkable! It’s rare when I’ve been in the room with a facilitator that can cover everything on the agenda and in doing so ensure that all voices are heard and equally weighted as appropriate. Mr. Sarley has decades of experience that easily and dynamically spills forth through his process such that when we didn’t know where to turn, he steered us toward the next target and offered industry insights and business constructs that our collective team wouldn’t have been able to develop on our own.
I highly recommend Mr. Sarley as an executive coach for leadership teams as well a facilitator for strategic planning.
—Jonathan Frappier | COO | Oshun Mountain Sanctuary
Working at Kripalu, under your leadership, has been the pinnacle of what I’ve been searching for in all the jobs I’ve ever had: meaningful work and excellent leadership. I used to get the first, but until now, never the second. I would say to people — I want to report to great leaders — and was told that I was dreaming and it doesn’t exist. Well, it does. This is a dream come true. Together we’ve done incredibly meaningful work and contributed to changing the lives of many, many others.
—Grace Welker, Editorial Director/Writer
The Sarley team provided a dimensional shift in progress at our retreat center. Their visions transformed the heart of our group, and what was previously impossible became possible. The visions and aspirations we had for our organization were real and wanted to happen; however, we couldn’t quite get lift off. By working with Dinabandhu and Ila, we learned the changes required of each person, and the organization as a whole, for the bud to flower. They brought both a deep, lived understanding of the principles at play and operational know-how that has allowed our organization to flower. We are realizing our vision in no small part due to them.
—Jason Thompson, The Land
Patton’s mentorship, expertise, and wisdom have been invaluable. He has shown me so many things I never would have thought of and has saved me from many costly mistakes I was bound to make. He knows every aspect and minute detail of running a retreat center that was my dream, and he is guiding me to make it happen. I am forever grateful.
— Rachael Jayne – Best selling author and founder of Awakened Leadership Training
