Center for Nonprofit Leadership > Faculty

Holly Minch
LightBox Collaborative
holly@lightboxcollaborative.com

Holly has spent her entire career helping do-gooders do better. She works with nonprofits, philanthropies and social entrepreneurs to unlock the potential of good ideas. Holly aids and abets good causes poised to leverage a shifting context to change the world in bigger, better, faster ways than ever before.

Her work has been honored by the Council on Foundations with a Gold Award for Excellence in Public Policy Communications. Holly was named by PR News as a “Young PR Star” recognized as a PR leader and creative practitioner in the industry. She was Editor of Loud and Clear in an Election Year, a guidebook created to help nonprofits convey their messages in the crowded election environment.

Holly launched the LightBox Collaborative to harness fresh talent to help jump-start strategic thinking, create clarity in real-time, and identify actionable approaches to engage communities toward good causes. Because she believes it’s easier to draw people into your ideas when you’re having fun, Holly has created game-based tools for facilitation of accelerated strategy dialog – and the fun format belies the deep questions she help teams tackle on a regular basis.

Holly’s experience includes her work as Vice President of Spitfire Strategies, where she created communications programs for grantees of the nation’s largest foundations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Holly was Executive Director of the Communications Leadership Institute, where she helped nonprofits use high-impact communications to achieve social change. Holly also served as Director of the SPIN Project, assisting hundreds of grassroots groups with strategic communications resources. She launched the successful SPIN Academy, now in its 12th year. Holly started out as press secretary for the Sierra Club, alternately doing battle with and cozying up to the Washington, D.C. press corps. She was primary contact for the national media, and created national, regional and local campaigns.

Because she wanted to be an English teacher when she grew up, Holly holds a B.A. in English literature and language from the University of Southern California. 

She lives in San Francisco with her husband in a flat that survived the Great Quake of 1906. Their household pets include an imaginary dog named Robot, and a few all-too-real dust bunnies that remain as yet unnamed.

Holly facilitates the following CNL workshops:

• Leadership 2.0: Creating Your Communications GAME Plan
• Communications as a Strategic Leadership Skill
• Communicating Your Cause…to Your Base & Beyond