Most of us have a cause we would work on for free. Claire Crum turned hers into a business. She spent years inside small grassroots nonprofits doing volunteer management, event planning and what she cheerfully calls general cat herding, and she now runs a six person ops agency built entirely around the sector. In this conversation she shows what it looks like when passion and skill set stop competing for your attention and start compounding. If you have ever wondered whether the thing you care about could also pay you, this is the episode.
Meet Claire
Claire Crum is the Founder and CEO of Calm Ops – Operations Consulting Agency where she and her team help Do-Gooders Do More Good. She is a Certified Director of Operations with over 20 years experience leading teams in the nonprofit and social impact sectors. Alongside her team at Calm Ops, she champions intentional action while simplifying complex processes and creating accessible resources to support leaders who want to increase their impact.
Where Passion and Skill Set Finally Meet
Claire did not set out to build an ops agency. She started in a small grassroots nonprofit, managing volunteers, planning events and doing what she calls general cat herding. Years of that taught her what a growing organization actually needs. When she found the DOO program, it confirmed what she already suspected: she wanted to build something of her own. I see so many operators sitting on a skill they have never named and a cause they quietly love. Claire is proof those two belong together, and that combining them is a business model rather than a compromise.
Why Nonprofits Prefer Operators Who Know the Sector
Nonprofits are a different animal, and Claire is direct about it. Different funding streams, different stakeholders, and a leanness that shapes every decision. Because of those nuances they strongly prefer people who already understand them, which is why referrals move so freely once you are inside. That is the part I want operators to hear. Specialising does not shrink your market, it makes you the obvious choice within one. Claire’s ops agency pairs team members with the client sectors they know best, healthcare or social services, so expertise compounds instead of spreading thin.
Systems That Outlast the Person Who Built Them
Most clients arrive because they have outgrown the systems they started with. Claire calls them accidental nonprofits, and it happens quickly when a community rallies behind a mission. Her team builds SharePoint sites, repairs filing systems, sets naming conventions and keeps the digital clutter down. None of it is glamorous and all of it decides whether people can do their work. The constraint I found most useful is hers: build for the people who will actually use it. Her ops agency is not there forever, so every system needs a champion inside the organization.
Operations Are Not an Overhead Line
If Claire could shift one belief in the sector, this is it. Operations are not overhead. They are what makes strong programming possible. She is careful to add that this does not require a full time hire or expensive software, it requires an intentional approach to how the work gets done. I would put the same challenge to operators looking at this space. There is real, sustainable work here, and a fractional ops agency gives an organization the capacity it needs without the weight of another employee on the payroll.
“We create our businesses to work around our life, not the other way around.” — Claire Crum
Weekly Ops Activity
If you could build an operations business around one industry or cause you’re passionate about, what would it be—and why?
Connect with Claire
Website: https://calm-ops.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairecrum/
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