Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Natalie Poindexter. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Natalie, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
Finding my purpose has been something that has taken time, it was not something that I can say I woke up one day and it appeared. My journey of finding purpose meant that I first had to deconstruct the version of myself that wasn’t fulfilling or helping me live in my purpose. I want to explain this in more detail, because it is something that has been heavy on my spirit the past few years. I’d even go as far to say that it was a journey that started six years ago when I packed up my life and moved from my home town Columbus, Ohio to Austin, Texas.
I was in a space where everything just suddenly stopped working where connections and relationships that would have been helpful before they weren’t working, nor were the usual job opportunities or career advances. Where usually a simple ask would open up doors, the responses stopped and completely dried up. However, what ended up happening was everything in Austin started to work and I realized that I was going to have to get over myself of understanding everything that’s going on and truly stepping into faith and what that actually means as someone who is saying, yes I’m ready to become the next best version of my most authentic self. When I made that decision to pack up my life and move across the country, I truly believe that that is when this journey of finding my purpose started, it has been one of the best, craziest, hardest things that I’ve ever done, but it’s something that I truly realize and understand I would not have been able to become this person if I stayed where I was at.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Here’s what I’m building. Intentionally rooted in purpose, not pleasing.
I’m a Funding Systems Architect and the founder of NPI Consulting House and Scaffina. For the past decade, I’ve helped nonprofits and small businesses (especially those led by women and communities of color) secure non-dilutive funding. I’ve seen how brilliant ideas get lost in chaos, and how “performing for approval” keeps too many leaders from claiming their full power. My work is about replacing that performance with structure, clarity, and sustainability.
Professionally, I operate at the intersection of public health, equity, and product design. NPI Consulting House is my strategy and grants practice, where I’ve supported organizations in building evidence-based programs, strong logic models, and fundable narratives. Scaffina is the next evolution, my tech product that turns the entire grants and procurement process into a repeatable, data-driven workflow. Think: a modern, guided workspace where teams build applications, track progress, and keep their storytelling aligned to outcomes. Scaffina meets leaders where they are and moves them from chaos to structure, without compromising voice or values.
What excites me most is the shift that happens when a founder or nonprofit leader stops trying to please the room and instead stands in purpose. When that happens, budgets become statements of power. Evaluation plans become testimonies. “No” becomes redirection, not rejection. My work, and the tools I’m creating, make that shift tangible and sustainable.
I’m also launching The Poindexter Effect, my newsletter, speaking series, and community space for BIPOC women on a metaphysical transformational journey. This is the room where we tell the truth about success: the parts that look like spreadsheets and the parts that look like shadow work. We talk money, mindset, and the mechanics of building, without shrinking ourselves to fit anyone’s comfort.
What’s new:
(1) Scaffina’s next release: After a successful MVP inside Notion, we’re rolling out an expanded, standalone experience with client portals, guided application builders, and AI-assisted writing that adapts to an organization’s brand voice and outcomes. The goal is simple: help teams produce higher-quality proposals in less time and with more confidence.
(2) Speaking & workshops: I’m on a national speaking track facilitating working sessions on grant readiness, sustainable funding systems, and executive mindset for women of color in leadership.
(3) The Poindexter Effect community: Opening membership with programming that blends practical funding strategy with personal transformation, because our businesses don’t scale beyond our nervous systems.
(4) TEDx (November 2025): My talk, “Quit Pleasing. Claim Your True Voice. ” shares the framework I use with clients and in my own life to move from external validation to authentic, measurable impact.
I want readers to know that I build for leaders who are done contorting themselves to be palatable. If you’re ready to operationalize your mission, tighten your systems, raise real dollars, and tell the unwatered-down story of your work – I’m your partner. My brand is modern, practical, and spiritually honest. We honor the data and the lived experience. We pursue funding and we pursue freedom. Both matter.
If any of this resonates, join The Poindexter Effect, bring me in to speak with your team or community, or explore Scaffina for your organization. This season of my life and work is about alignment: releasing pleasing, embodying purpose, and building structures that hold the weight of our vision.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
When I look back, the things that moved my life the most weren’t the fancy titles or the big milestones. It was three very quiet, very stubborn muscles I had to build: radical self-honesty, systems thinking, and the courage to be supported.
1. Radical self-honesty (especially when it’s inconvenient)
For a long time, I was the “strong Black woman who will figure it out.” I knew how to perform excellence, how to please a room, how to make everyone comfortable… except myself.
Radical self-honesty started the moment I let myself say, “I’m not okay like this,” and actually believe my own voice over people’s expectations of me. It’s what led me to leave roles that looked good on paper, shift my business, stand on a TEDx stage and say out loud, “Quit pleasing and move into your purpose,” and then actually live that message when no one was clapping.
How to develop it:
– Start with *small* truths. Tell the truth about little things: “I don’t actually want to go to that event,” or “This client isn’t aligned.” Your capacity for bigger truth grows from there.
– Listen to your body. If your chest gets tight, your jaw clenches, you feel drained after certain conversations;
that IS data. Don’t gaslight yourself out of it.
– Make reflection a practice, not a crisis response. Journal, voice note, sit in your car for five minutes before you walk in the house, ask yourself: “What do I actually want? What feels like a no that I’ve been calling a maybe?”
Radical self-honesty is not about blowing up your life overnight. It’s about slowly aligning your outer life with what your inner self has been whispering for years.
2. Seeing life as a system, not a series of emergencies
My background spans pre-hospital medicine, public health, nonprofits, consulting, and now tech. For a while it felt random. Then I realized my real gift: I see systems.
I can walk into a nonprofit, a grant process, or a founder’s life and see the patterns. Where energy leaks, where people are over-functioning, where the story and the structure don’t match. That’s the same muscle I use to build Scaffina: turning the chaos of funding into something that actually has flow.
How to develop it:
– Ask “What’s the pattern here?” more often. Instead of only asking, “Why is this happening to me?” ask, “How often does this happen? What tends to come right before it? What’s the common denominator?”
– Learn the basics of how things move: operations, money, time, and people. You don’t need an MBA, but an understanding of budgets, workflows, and capacity will calm your nervous system and sharpen your decisions.
– Zoom in and zoom out. Practice moving between the tiny detail (this one overdue email) and the bigger system (I say yes too quickly, then avoid the fallout). That’s where your real power sits.
When you start to see systems, you stop taking everything so personally. It’s not always that you are failing, often the system you’re inside of was never designed for you to thrive.
3. The courage to be supported (instead of being the savior)
As Black women, many of us were raised to be the safety net, not the one who gets caught. My journey shifted the moment I stopped trying to be everyone’s solution and allowed myself to receive: mentorship, community, therapy, business support, spiritual guidance.
Building NPI Consulting House, Net-Do Community, The Poindexter Effect, and now Scaffina has required me to stop performing “I got it” and start saying, “Here’s where I’m actually at. Here’s what I need.”
How to develop it:
– Practice specific asks. Not “Can you help me?” but “Can you review this deck?” “Can you introduce me to one nonprofit leader?” “Can you hold me accountable to one boundary this month?”
– Join or build rooms where you don’t have to shrink. If you’re always the most capable person in the space, you’re probably under-supported. Seek communities where you can be both brilliant and held.
– Let receiving feel awkward and do it anyway. The first time you let someone pay, mentor, or advocate for you without immediately “repaying” them, your nervous system will twitch. Breathe through it. That’s you learning you are worthy of support, not just service.
If you’re early in your journey, my biggest advice is this:
Move slower internally, even if your career moves look fast on Instagram. Tell yourself the truth sooner. Study the patterns instead of just surviving the crisis. And please, stop building a life where everyone else is supported by you… but you are running on fumes.
The version of me writing this is not the girl who just learned how to grind; she’s the woman who finally chose herself, built systems that support that choice, and allowed community to catch her when the old patterns tried to drag her back. That’s the journey I’d wish for anyone coming up behind me.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
Absolutely—I am very much in a season of partnership and collaboration with Scaffina. Scaffina is my funding systems platform that helps grant-dependent nonprofits and certified small businesses move from chaos to structure in their grant and procurement pipelines. I’m not building it just for individual organizations; I’m building it to strengthen entire ecosystems of impact.
I’m especially looking to collaborate with:
Nonprofit and small business ecosystem leaders: intermediaries, backbone organizations, membership associations, technical assistance providers, and community foundations that support cohorts of nonprofits and certified small businesses. If you’re responsible for helping dozens or hundreds of organizations “get grant ready” and stay fundable, I want to explore how Scaffina can be your structured backbone, whether through pilots, cohort-based programs, or white-labeled capacity-building offerings.
Funders and philanthropy partners: foundations, corporate social impact teams, and public agencies that know their grantees need more than just a check; they need infrastructure. I’m interested in partnering on TA programs, readiness cohorts, and tools that make applications more equitable and less exhausting for both sides. Scaffina can help standardize the support you offer grantees while honoring their unique stories and communities.
Technology and infrastructure partners: CRMs, project management tools, data platforms, and other tech products serving nonprofits and small businesses. If you’re building tools that touch fundraising, operations, or compliance, there’s likely a natural integration or co-created feature set that could make life easier for our shared users.
Grant writers and strategic consultants: if you’re already the “behind-the-scenes brain” for your clients and want a more efficient, structured way to manage grant pipelines, I’m open to collaboration models where Scaffina becomes part of your toolkit or a platform you bring into your own service offerings.
If you’re reading this and thinking, “My people are the exact folks Scaffina is built for,” I’d love to connect.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nataliepoindexter.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/nataliepoindexter
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-poindexter-mph-ches/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thepoindextereffect
Image Credits
Doogie Roux Photography, League Creative Group.
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
