Nonprofit · 0-to-1 · Program Strategy · Product Frameworks
Bringing product rigor to a nonprofit program launch — because mission-driven work deserves the same discipline as a Series A startup.
Director of Product Strategy — Board-Level, Single Mom Strong
Organization
Single Mom Strong (SMS)
Program
SMS Teens — a support program for teenage children of single mothers
Stage
0-to-1 program launch
Methods
Golden Circle, North Star Metric, Problem Statement, Hypothesis-Driven Strategy, Risk-Based Assumptions
The organization
Single Mom Strong is a nonprofit dedicated to empowering single mothers through community, resources, and support systems. As the organization grew, it identified a gap: the teenage children of single mothers were navigating their own set of challenges largely without structured support.
The SMS Teens program was conceived to fill that gap. My role as Director of Product Strategy was to bring product thinking to the launch — turning a vision into a strategically grounded, measurable program with a clear reason for existing.
“A program without a problem statement isn't a strategy. It's a hope.”
The SMS Teens concept existed before the problem was fully defined. One of the first things I introduced was a formal problem statement process — forcing alignment on who exactly we were serving, what friction they were experiencing, and why existing resources weren't solving it.
The core insight: teenage children of single mothers face compounded instability — emotional, social, and developmental — but most youth programs treat them as a generic demographic rather than a specific, high-need cohort with distinct challenges.
Without naming that problem precisely, any program we built risked being too broad to matter to anyone.
The strategy foundation
Why: Single mothers shouldn't have to carry their children's development alone. SMS Teens exists to build the support infrastructure that surrounds the whole family.
How: By creating a structured teen program grounded in community, mentorship, and evidence-based youth development principles.
What: A recurring program offering SMS teens connection, skill-building, and adult mentorship outside the home.
Active Family Engagement — defined as the number of SMS families with at least one teen participating in a recurring monthly program touchpoint.
This metric was chosen deliberately. Enrollment alone would reward acquisition. Active engagement rewards retention and real impact — the behaviors that indicate the program is delivering value, not just filling seats.
My approach
01
Led the organization through a Golden Circle exercise to anchor the program in a clear purpose before any program features were defined. This prevented scope creep and kept every subsequent decision tied to mission.
02
Facilitated a problem statement workshop with SMS leadership. Output: a single, agreed-upon problem statement that named the user, the friction, and the gap in existing solutions.
03
Introduced the concept of a North Star Metric to the board — a single number that would tell us whether the program was working. Defined active family engagement as the metric and built supporting metrics around it.
04
Wrote formal hypothesis statements for the program's core assumptions. Identified and ranked risk-based assumptions by likelihood and impact. This gave the board a framework for prioritizing what to validate first before investing in full build-out.
Hypothesis statement
“We believe that teenage children of single mothers who participate in at least one SMS Teens session per month will report feeling more supported and connected than before joining the program — because structured peer community and adult mentorship directly address the isolation and instability most common in this cohort.
We will know this is true when 65% of participating teens report a measurable increase in sense of belonging after 90 days of program participation.”
Key assumptions & risks
Families will prioritize consistent teen program attendance alongside existing SMS commitments.
Risk: Competing demands on single-mother households may limit participation frequency.
Mitigation: Design sessions around school calendars and minimize logistical barriers to attendance.
A recurring monthly touchpoint is sufficient frequency to produce meaningful engagement and measurable belonging outcomes.
Risk: Monthly cadence may be too infrequent to build real community in early cohorts.
Mitigation: Supplement with lightweight async touchpoints, group chat, and shared resources between sessions.
SMS has sufficient volunteer and mentor capacity to sustain the program at launch without straining existing operations.
Risk: Mentor recruitment is an untested motion for SMS at this scale.
Mitigation: Define minimum viable mentor ratio before committing to cohort size targets.
What I learned
The most transferable lesson from SMS Teens is that product constraints don't disappear in nonprofit contexts — they multiply. No engineering team, no budget runway, no user research budget. Every framework had to earn its place by being actionable with the resources actually available.
Introducing a North Star Metric to a nonprofit board was its own product challenge. The concept of measuring mission through a single number required as much change management as it did analytical thinking. Getting alignment on what to measure forced a deeper conversation about what success actually meant — which turned out to be the most valuable output of the whole process.
This work reinforced something I carry into every product context: strategy without measurement is just intention. The frameworks only matter if they change what you build and how you decide.