About Us
Optimize Passion LLC is a boutique management consultancy that specializes in strategic planning, board development, program development, revenue modeling and grants management for growing nonprofit organizations. We also provide strategy and growth support to social entrepreneurs and enterprises.
Our Mission is to help passionate people and organizations thrive.
Our Services include consulting, coaching, capacity building and education.
Our Story
The birth of our company was inspired by passionate people, community leaders, and mission-driven organizations.
Who is a passionate person? It’s someone guided by purpose and fueled by passion. It’s someone who desires deeply and is willing to make sacrifices to chase his or her dream. It's the visionary business entrepreneur or nonprofit founder.
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What is a mission-driven organization? It can be a business, social enterprise, or nonprofit organization. It can be an animal shelter, childcare center, or soap-making business. Simply put, it is an organization anchored and directed by its mission.
Our Staff
Jennifer Tung Alexander, MPA - Principal, Capacity Builder & Coach
Jennifer Alexander is the founder and principal of Optimize Passion LLC, a business leadership, management and strategy consultancy that provides capacity building and education services to small businesses and growing nonprofit organizations. As capacity builder and coach, she works with a team of affiliated consultants to serve small businesses and growing nonprofit organizations.
Jennifer strongly believes in building a solid foundation. She particularly enjoys working with passionate founders who are navigating the nonprofit sector for the very first time. As a coach, Jennifer provides coaching to nonprofit founders who believe that it is part of their life calling and purpose to establish, lead, and further the mission of the organization they've birthed. As a coach, she also facilitates team-building, board development and strategic planning sessions for inaugural nonprofit boards. She consistently encourages and supports leaders of early-stage nonprofits in taking the time to establish a solid foundation on which to continue building a nonprofit and further its mission.
As a highly introspective person, Jennifer developed a strong interest in human behavior at a young age. Therefore, she pursued a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, graduating in 2011. Upon her college graduation, Jennifer began her journey in the nonprofit sector as an AmeriCorps VISTA, serving two back-to-back terms of national service at Veronica's Voice, a founder-led nonprofit that serves survivors of sex trafficking. During her time as a VISTA, Jennifer fell in love with the nonprofit sector and decided to return to her alma mater to gain more knowledge and tools about effective nonprofit leadership. She enrolled in the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, graduating in 2015 with a Master of Public Administration in Nonprofit Management. She also obtained a Certificate in Fundraising in 2015 from the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership where she served as a Graduate Research Assistant for 15 months.
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Today, with 13 years of nonprofit sector capacity building experience, Jennifer has provided services to more than 25 health and human service nonprofit organizations, many of which are nonprofits led by founders or second-generation executives. These agencies include Amethyst Place, Birthday Connections, Carousel Adult Day Care, Cambridge House Enrichment Center, Children of Incarcerated Parents, Children of Homicide Victims, Child Protection Center, Free Thought, Fountain of Life, GateWay of Hope, Harvesters, Hold Em Up 4 Care, KC Mothers in Charge, Lean on Me Ministries, Lyrik's Institution, My Angel Lives, North Carolina Housing Coalition, Pathway To Hope, Paws and Pals, Samaritans Wingz, Sisters in Christ, Wishes with Wings, UrbnHubKC, Veronica's Voice, Youth Development Strategies, Inc., and more.
Jennifer has facilitated board development, engaged in strategic planning, crafted agency policies and procedures, reworked logic models, drafted case statements, built volunteer programs, facilitated budgeting processes, drafted annual fund development plans, diversified revenue streams, secured private and government grant funding, designed signature fundraising events, and more.
As a Lifecycles Capacity Consultant, Jennifer uses a lifecycles framework in her capacity building work. She specializes in building the board governance, administrative, fund development, and program capacities of nonprofit organizations navigating the challenges of and transitions between the idea, start-up, and growth lifecycle stages. Since establishing Optimize Passion LLC in 2020, Jennifer has helped growing nonprofit organizations strategically identify areas for board engagement and growth, reexamine the sustainability of their revenue models, prepare for longtime executive departure and new executive onboarding, and secure more than $2.5 million in private foundation and government grant funding.
Jennifer is a second-generation Chinese American. She is the daughter of immigrants from Taiwan. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and holds elementary proficiency in Spanish. Growing up in a community where she has always been the ethnic minority, Jennifer has a unique grasp of cultural empathy and an affinity for underrepresented ethnic and racial groups. She is passionate about bridging cultural understanding.
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Jennifer is also the founder of Fountain of Life Inc. a senior community center serving the Asian older adult population of Greater Kansas City. She currently serves as Board President and Acting CEO. Under Jennifer's leadership, the agency secured $72,000 of grant funding within its first 18 months of operation.
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Damion Alexander, MPA - Co-principal, Capacity Builder & Coach
Damion Alexander serves as co-principal of Optimize Passion LLC. Damion specializes in board governance, executive leadership, strategic planning, and human resource development for social service and faith-based nonprofit organizations. He enjoys working with executives, boards, and senior staff to develop leadership equity and staff morale which ultimately leads to increased mission impact.
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Damion has more than 10 years of public sector experience during which he held various leadership and management positions including Executive Director of Community Assistance Council, Board Chair of KC Mothers in Charge, Corporate Relations Manager at City Union Mission, and Life Transformation Coach at Connections to Success.
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Damion holds a Master of Public Administration in Nonprofit Management and Urban Policy and Administration, Bachelors of Arts in Communications, and Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). From 2012 to 2013, he served as Graduate Research Assistant at Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership.
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Damion brings a unique set of life experiences to his consulting and capacity building work. He was incarcerated for nearly 9 years in federal prison for two felonies. He understands firsthand the challenges faced by at-risk youth and ex-offenders.
After being released from prison in 2008, encouraged by his parole officer, Damion applied for and received the full-ride undergraduate Osher Reentry Scholarship to UMKC. During his college years, while still on probation, he was extended special permission to study abroad in Spain during the summer of 2011.
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Through the continuing grace of God, against all odds, Damion has been employed at a federal agency since 2018. Damion is passionate about Jesus and spends much of his time working with local church communities. In 2022, Damion graduated from Graceway Ministry School, a three-year leadership and ministry training experience.
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Jennifer and Damion Alexander are the blessed parents of four energetic children - Judah, Josiah, Zoe and Faith. They currently reside in the Kansas City metropolitan area.
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Our Partners
Keyonna Steele - Development Consultant | Projects INK | k.steele@projectsinked.com
Keyonna Steele of Projects INK is a seasoned development consultant serving the Kansas City metropolitan area. She has more than a decade of successful grant proposal writing, fund development, and marketing experience. Keyonna utilizes her gift of prose and business management savvy to help social service nonprofits build capacity and carry out their missions. Since 2015, she has served as a technical assistance provider for the Health Forward Foundation where she has provided grant proposal editing support to numerous growing nonprofits in Greater Kansas City. Whether you need help with writing a grant proposal, reviewing/editing a grant proposal or drafting a newsletter, Keyonna's support will exceed your expectations!
Keyonna holds a Masters of Management from Baker University. She is the proud mother of an accomplished college student!
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William Moore, Ph.D. - Principal | The Strategy Group | thestrategygrp.org
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William (Bill) Moore is the Principal at The Strategy Group and Senior Fellow with the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership. Bill was appointed by Mayor Copeland to the Olathe Human Relations Commission to continue his work on equity, diversity and inclusion for Olathe, Kansas.
Bill has spent his entire career working in our most challenged communities - both urban and rural - and with vulnerable populations to find solutions to our most pressing social, education, and health concerns. As the former Vice President of Programs and Evaluation at the REACH Healthcare Foundation, he designed and guided implementation of community projects designed to give rural communities a chance to redefine what it means to live in rural America and be healthy. In Kansas City, Kansas, he led the investment of funds to find out why urban economically disadvantaged persons and their families could not access the health care services they needed. And, at the Institute for Research and Reform in Education, he worked with dozens of under-performing urban schools to improve the engagement of students, the alignment of instructional content, and the rigor of curricula to prepare youth for academic success and improved life chances. His personal mission is to help people and improve the world we all live in.
Previously, Bill served as the Director of Research in two urban school systems and at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He is a former professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center and Senior Research Associate at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. View Bill's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moorewp/
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Asha Dèree White - Communications, Brand Management & Design Thinker
Over the course of ten years, Asha has worked as a development professional with diverse non-profits throughout Kansas City. Through these experiences, she's developed a commitment to supporting community-centered cultural and educational programming that advances women and youth. She has dedicated herself to helping leaders create meaning in their own lives and in their organizations, which results in motivated employees, customer commitment and bottom-line performance. Her powerful intuition blended with her ability to shift perspective allows others to successfully craft and bring their ideas to light.
Asha specializes in strategic planning, communication, design, and brand management for startups. She has a degree in Business Marketing from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
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Leilani Haywood - Haywood Marketing Communications | leilani@haywoodmarketing.com
Leilani Haywood owns Haywood Marketing Communications which helps nonprofits tell their story to attract donors, recruit volunteers and raise funds through digital marketing. An award-winning writer and digital marketing guru, Leilani has worked with nonprofits for over 10 years in various marketing communication positions. Before starting her own agency, she worked with the Community Blood Center of Greater Kansas City as a marketing communications manager and served on boards for the Down Syndrome Guild, First Down for Downs, and CinemaKC. Her clients have included the KC Social Innovation Center/Hire KC, International Association of Administrative Professionals, In-Plant Printing and Mailing Association, the Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches of North America, Project Lydia, and Global Outreach.
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David Freeman - Research & Program Development
David is a compassionate and versatile professional dedicated to the empowerment of individuals and families. He has experience developing an organization's capacity as they address barriers to community engagement. He is patient, focused and insightful.
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