What If Nonprofits Worked Like Teaching Hospitals?
A different approach to strategy, staffing, and growth
Earlier today, I wrote about what newsrooms can learn from hospitals — specifically, from the way teaching hospitals structure learning and leadership.
But after I hit publish, I realized I had made it too narrow.
The structure I described in that first piece isn’t just useful for newsrooms. It’s something any nonprofit can use to work smarter, move faster, and build a stronger team — without burning everyone out.
So I reworked it with a broader lens. Because if you’re trying to make a real impact with limited time, money, and staff, this kind of structure can make a surprising difference.
The core idea:
Nonprofits can benefit from borrowing a page out of the teaching hospital playbook.
Each day, teams of doctors, residents, and medical students walk room to room together. They talk through each patient case out loud — what’s going on, what they’re trying, what they’re learning. Everyone gets smarter, together, in real time.
It’s collaborative. It’s fast. And it’s designed to make the whole team — and the outcomes — better.
What if we brought that same mindset to our nonprofits?
The Teaching Hospital Model for Nonprofits
Let’s map it out.
Frontline Staff = Medical Students
These are the folks doing the work — running programs, supporting clients, responding to the moment. They’re closest to the action and often first to spot what’s working (and what’s not).
Senior Leaders = Attending Physicians
These are your senior leaders — the folks who’ve seen a few cycles and know how to steer the ship. But their job isn’t just to direct traffic. It’s to teach while they lead.
Specialists = Subject Matter Experts
Your fundraising leads, marketing team, DEI consultants, or data analysts. Like cardiologists or neurologists, they offer deep expertise when a challenge needs precision.
Lab Coats = Innovators and Explorers
The people testing new tools, piloting programs, or researching best practices. Their work doesn’t always show up on this quarter’s dashboard — but it shapes what comes next.
At the center of it all is your community. Just like hospitals serve real patients, nonprofits exist to serve real people. Listening, adapting, and staying grounded in their needs isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the whole point.
Putting It Into Practice: Nonprofit Rounds
You don’t need to hand out lab coats or create a whole new department. You just need a few habits that make it easier for people to learn from each other and get better as they go.
1. Host “Case Conferences”
Pick a project, program, or challenge and bring a cross-functional team together to talk through it — what worked, where it hit friction, and what’s next. Make it regular. Make it safe to disagree. The goal isn’t to assign blame. It’s to make space to figure out what actually happened — and what can be learned from it.
2. Make Peer Learning a Built-In, Not a Bonus
Set up simple ways for people to swap ideas — mentorships, lunch-and-learns, even a shared Slack channel for “what worked this week.” Some of the best insight lives in hallway chats. Capture it.
3. Protect Space for the Messy Stuff
If everything’s on fire, nothing can evolve. Make sure your team has time (and permission) to experiment, reflect, and try something new — even if it’s not tied to a deliverable. That’s where breakthroughs live.
4. Build the Muscle for Change
When learning’s baked into the day-to-day — not just something you scramble to do after something breaks — your team gets better at adjusting on the fly. And that’s the kind of muscle you want in a world that keeps shifting.
This idea won’t solve every challenge. But it might shift the way you approach them. By acting a little more like a teaching hospital, your team can get better at getting better.
And if you're already doing something like this, I’d love to hear about it.
🧭 This post is adapted from my earlier piece, What Newsrooms Can Learn From Hospitals.
For more frameworks and tools like this, you can subscribe to Backstory & Strategy — it’s free and publishes most weekdays.