Margot Holmes, Nonprofit Consultant at Blue Heron Nonprofit Consulting
Blue Heron works with nonprofit leaders who are growing, in transition, or trying to get grant-ready, and need a calm, experienced partner more than a big firm. Every engagement is built so the capacity stays inside your organization. If some of that sounds like where you are, this page will tell you who you'd be working with.
Behind that work are Margot Holmes, the founder, and Angela Kelley, her co-lead on Interim Executive Director engagements.
Why This Work, and Why It's Different Coming From Us
We lead with what we've done. A nonprofit in the middle of a funding cut, a leadership gap, or a growth spurt needs someone who has sat in the chair and knows what the next right step looks like, even when the way forward isn't a straight line. Progress doesn't always look the way an organization expects going in, but it still gets them to their goal.
That's the judgment we bring to every engagement, earned by direct experience in the seat.
Founder
My Background
I'm Margot Holmes, founder of Blue Heron. I have 15+ years across direct service, program management, and executive leadership in the nonprofit sector, including several years as Executive Director of a Vermont parent-child center, where I managed staff, board relationships, budgets, and the day-to-day reality of running a small nonprofit with real constraints and real stakes. I hold a Master's in Nonprofit Management from Northeastern University.
That experience is why I started Blue Heron. I've been the person staring at a budget gap at 9 p.m., the person a board expected to have every answer, and the person who had to build a system from nothing because no one had built one before me. I know what it takes to stabilize an organization, because I've done the work from inside one.
You can also find me on LinkedIn.
I also testified before the Vermont legislature on parent-child center funding and served as co-chair of the Vermont Parent Child Center Network, work that put me in rooms where nonprofit funding, policy, and survival were the whole conversation.
I work with a small number of organizations at a time.
How I Work
I'm boundaried about scope because I think that's what integrity looks like in this work. I'll tell you plainly what an engagement includes, and where it stops. Most of my work is project-based, with clear deliverables and a defined timeline. The exception is the Strategic Leadership Partnership, which is ongoing by design.
I'm also concrete. Every engagement produces something you can hold: a document, a system, a plan with a defined shape, focused and practical and yours to keep. My job is to make sure what I build keeps working for you once our engagement ends.
That approach has held up in practice. Blue Heron helped the Orange County Parent Child Center win a Northern Border Regional Commission federal grant, the kind of result that comes from knowing how funders and nonprofits work.
Angela Kelley, Co-Lead on Interim Executive Director
On Blue Heron Nonprofit Consulting's Interim Executive Director engagements, Margot doesn't work alone. Angela Kelley is her co-lead. The two of them cover interim leadership together, so an organization in transition has more than one experienced person steadying it. Angela brings her own nonprofit leadership background to that work. A real co-lead means an organization isn't relying on one person during one of its most vulnerable moments.
Gratitude: Anne Peyton
Margot didn't build this practice alone, and one person earns a direct thank-you here. Anne Peyton has been a mentor to her: guidance that shaped how she thinks about this work, and a referral network that sent her one of her earliest clients. Anne isn't affiliated with Blue Heron; this is gratitude, plainly, for someone who helped along the way.
Work With Us
If you've read this far, you know who you'd be working with. Take a look at our services to see how engagements are structured, or reach out directly. We respond within one business day.