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Thomas Capone, CEO of NYDLA, sat down with Sophia Shaw — Co-founder of PlanPerfect and former President & CEO of the Chicago Botanic Garden — to discuss how she took decades of nonprofit leadership, board governance teaching at Northwestern's Kellogg School, and an idea that came to her during a morning meditation, and built them into software that helps small and mid-sized nonprofits plan, track, and raise more money.

Summary:

Sophia Shaw is a nonprofit sector veteran and co-founder of PlanPerfect — a software platform that helps small to mid-sized nonprofits build strategic plans, manage risk, and operate more effectively. Drawing on her experience as President and CEO of the Chicago Botanic Garden, as a board governance professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and as a consultant, she built PlanPerfect alongside co-founder Adam Wolford to solve a problem she encountered throughout her entire career: nonprofits had no dedicated tool for strategic planning. The platform guides executive directors and board chairs through creating a living plan, tracking progress, and reporting outcomes — replacing scattered spreadsheets and forgotten Word documents. Sophia explains that their biggest competitor is not another software company, but doing nothing at all. The conversation covers how PlanPerfect is currently working with 30 public TV and radio stations through the Public Media Company, how AI functions as a partner within the platform rather than a replacement for human judgment, and why fundraising — the ability to show donors that their money will be well spent — is the feature that most often seals the deal. The interview closes with Sophia's reflection on why more women and older professionals need to become the face of tech entrepreneurship, and why she believes the nonprofit sector is too important not to fight for.