Call to order · Springfield, Illinois
PW Management Group runs the executive office for associations, foundations, and nonprofits that outgrew the kitchen table — governance, finances, grant administration, conferences, and communications under one retainer, with no payroll to carry.
Retainer-based · annual terms · built for boards of 5 to 25
Somewhere along the way, your president became a receptionist. The treasurer chases dues from a personal Gmail. Conference planning lives in one member’s head, and every board transition means starting over — new passwords, lost files, another volunteer quietly deciding this term will be their last.
This is the standard failure mode of a growing association — and of its cousins, the family foundation run from a founder’s dining room and the nonprofit whose “staff” is one heroic treasurer. It has nothing to do with commitment. Governing an organization and operating one are different jobs. Your board should be doing the first. We exist to do the second.
You keep the gavel, the mission, and the vote. We take the inbox, the ledger, and the logistics.
The traditional answer to “we need staff” is hiring an executive director — a salary, payroll taxes, benefits, software, and office overhead your association carries alone, whether it’s conference week or the quiet of July.
The management-company answer shares that infrastructure across a small portfolio of clients. You get executive leadership, an operations team, and professional systems for roughly half the fully-loaded cost of one employee — and no one ever calls in sick on your annual meeting.
Drag the sliders to the numbers your board has been quoting each other, and let the ledger do the talking.
Typical mid-market ED range: $75,000–$130,000
Rent, insurance, systems, and the costs one employer carries alone
| Base salary | $92,000 |
| Payroll taxes & benefits (est. 28%) | $25,760 |
| Office, software & admin overhead | $14,000 |
| Total annual cost | $131,760 |
| PW full-service engagement (typical annual) | $49,990 |
| Payroll, benefits & office overhead | $0 |
| Total annual cost | $49,990 |
Illustrative figures for board discussion. The engagement shown reflects a typical full-service year; your retainer is quoted after a confidential scope review.
For volunteer-run groups that need the machine to simply run
Your complete headquarters — executive leadership included
For family & private foundations that need a professional back office
Project-based production for your flagship gathering
We don’t publish glossy promises; we publish minutes. The following is a partial record of the work that built PW’s operating system — produced across statewide and national organizations, and now the standard our delivery team is held to.
The 2026 Illinois Circularity Conference — venue contracting, multi-track program, speaker management, sponsor development, registration, print program, and the full email campaign series — delivered for a statewide 501(c)(3).
Program page, agenda system, and promotional campaigns for the 35th National Recycling Congress, produced for a national coalition and its state affiliates.
Board-ready budget workbooks, monthly treasurer’s reports, and P&L reconciliation, plus a chart-of-accounts and class-tracking cleanup in QuickBooks Online — the kind of reporting an auditor smiles at.
A recurring member newsletter, campaign email infrastructure reaching thousands of members, scholarship and webinar promotions, and the unglamorous list hygiene that keeps it all deliverable.
Our principal is a published author on operational systems and recycling programs — the same systems thinking we bring to association operations.
The principal of PW Management Group has spent his career inside the rooms where associations succeed or stall — as the executive director of a statewide 501(c)(3), as a communications and development contractor to a national coalition, and as the producer of the conferences, newsletters, budgets, grant cycles, and board packets that keep mission-driven organizations alive.
That experience is the standard, not the staffing plan. PW is deliberately built as a firm, not a freelancer: a dedicated delivery team runs your daily operations, communications, member data, and event production inside systems the principal built by hand — someone who has personally closed the sponsors, reconciled the books, and stood at the registration table at 6:40 a.m. Principal-level review sits on everything that matters, from financial reporting to anything that carries your organization’s name.
It’s a deliberate answer to the problem that brings most boards here. You already know the danger of an organization that depends on one person — we won’t replace one heroic volunteer with one heroic consultant. Engagements are led from Springfield, Illinois: U.S.-based executive oversight, global production capacity, and continuity that doesn’t hinge on any single calendar. Financial controls, member data, and banking access always remain onshore, under documented internal controls your treasurer will approve of.
One omission on this page is deliberate: no names. We’d rather you meet the work before the résumé — full credentials, references, and the people across the table come with the first conversation. On paper, the minutes above speak for themselves.
Vote honestly on the five motions below — aye if the statement is true of your organization today, nay if it isn’t. The chair will rule on what your votes mean.
Resolved: every member email receives a professional reply within one business day.
Resolved: the board receives accurate, reconciled financial reports every month without asking twice.
Resolved: renewals are invoiced and collected on schedule, and no officer personally chases payments.
Resolved: our flagship conference breaks even or better, and no volunteer loses a month of their life to it.
Resolved: if our two most involved volunteers stepped away tomorrow, operations would continue without loss.
The floor awaits your vote · 0 of 5 recorded
An AMC is a firm that serves as your organization’s professional headquarters and staff. Your board keeps full governing authority — mission, policy, budget approval, elections — while we execute operations: administration, finances, events, and communications. It’s the model behind thousands of associations, foundations, and nonprofits that look fully staffed and technically have no employees at all.
Because you’re not buying our infrastructure alone. Software, systems, production capacity, and administrative time are shared across a small client portfolio, so each association pays for the executive attention it uses — not for idle capacity, benefits, office space, or turnover risk. See the treasurer’s report above for the arithmetic.
They get promoted — back to the work they signed up for. Committees keep leading programs and policy; we handle scheduling, minutes, follow-through, and logistics so volunteer energy goes to mission, not administration. Volunteer retention typically improves when the clerical burden disappears.
You do. Accounts stay in your organization’s name, board-designated officers retain signing authority, and we operate under documented internal controls with full transparency to your treasurer. Member data remains your property, housed in U.S.-based systems, exportable on request at any time.
A dedicated delivery team — association administrators, communicators, designers, and data support — working inside PW’s documented operating systems, with an assigned lead for your account. Our principal sets the standards and personally reviews financial reporting and board-facing materials before they reach you. Sensitive access stays onshore and controlled; production capacity is what scales.
Annual retainer agreements aligned to your fiscal year, with a defined scope of services, a 90-day structured onboarding, and clean off-boarding provisions — your files, lists, and logins are always yours. Conference production is scoped as a fixed project fee so budgets hold no surprises.
That vertical is where our network runs deepest, and sustainability-sector boards get an executive who already speaks their language. But the machinery of a well-run association — governance, dues, events, communications — is universal, and we serve trade associations, professional societies, charitable nonprofits, and private foundations across sectors.
Most start small on purpose: a flat-fee strategy session, a conference produced as a standalone project, or the Essentials tier. Trust is built in deliverables, not proposals — full-service conversations tend to follow the first delivered event or clean financial quarter.
A 30-minute board consultation costs nothing and reads like a second opinion on your operations: where the hours are going, what a right-sized engagement looks like, and what to fix first even if you never hire us.
Email the firm · 217.481.6915 · Springfield, Illinois · replies within one business day. Naturally.