Meet Rebecca Caplan, Principal & Founder
Welcome to Upcast Strategies.
I have spent years helping nonprofits, social ventures and funders identify cutting-edge techniques and the most productive pathways to mission achievement and social impact. Now it is my organizational mission.
Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Yet that is exactly how so many social-change organizations are still operating.
But it’s a different world. Growth is shifting, disruption accelerating, and resources becoming even more scarce.
And leaders of mission-driven organizations confront a more profoundly uncertain environment than ever before. They need strategies and tools that help them plan for and confront these dynamics so they can build resilience and efficacy in the face of constant change.
They need a new way of thinking to solve problems and seize extraordinary opportunities that will lead to sustainable growth and transformative change for those they serve.
I am committed to helping you develop holistic, next-generation strategies that build resilience and inspire a new narrative of sustainable impact.
Let’s get started.
Bio
Rebecca Caplan is principal and founder of Upcast Strategies a national, boutique consultancy that provides strategic counsel and high-impact training to the leaders of nonprofits, companies and mission-driven organizations with a specialized focus on strategic planning, impact measurement and communications.
She has extensive experience helping nonprofit boards of directors, chief executives and staff leaders identify cutting-edge techniques and the most productive pathways to mission achievement and social impact.
While Rebecca began her career as a financial analyst on Wall Street with Goldman Sachs & Co., she has over a decade of experience leading and scaling social good organizations as a nonprofit chief executive, corporate responsibility director and board leader.
In 2010, Rebecca was appointed executive director of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Charitable Foundation, Inc., a separate, 501(c)(3) organization that supports the people of PwC in times of need and invests in emerging solutions to society’s greatest challenges in education and humanitarianism.
During her 6-year tenure as executive director of the foundation, assets more than doubled and the number of nonprofit organizations served grew more than 12 times over.
Partnering with PwC leaders and more than three dozen national, regional, and local nonprofits from the education, veterans, and humanitarian sectors, Rebecca helped drive a fourfold expansion of the organization’s programmatic offerings.
Then, and now, she is helping executives and their boards explore extraordinary opportunities to craft and implement adaptive, progressive strategies that position them to:
- Attract funding and build revenue for financial sustainability
- Deliver connected, distinctive experiences that drive awareness, engagement and support
- Measure outcomes and maximize impact
- Work effectively and collaboratively with funders, partners, and grantees
Currently, Rebecca serves on the board of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Lancaster and is chair of the strategic planning committee.
She has also served on:
- The leadership committee of the Points of Light (POL) Civic Incubator — a working committee responsible for overseeing the implementation of the accelerator program and providing strategic, programmatic, and operational input to the POL advisory council.
- The board of Developmental and Disability Services of Lancaster
- The advisory board of Lebanon Pennsylvania Family Health Services
Rebecca graduated cum laude from Villanova University and has earned the following certificates of practice:
- Social Impact Strategy: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, Center for Social Impact Strategy, 2016
- Performance Measurement and Communications for Effective Management of Nonprofits: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2013
- Human Resource Management: Duke University, Durham, NC, 2003
- Intermediate Chinese: Fudan University, Shanghai China, 1998
Rebecca is personally passionate about working on issues related to: Child and animal welfare, nonprofit capacity building, and social impact.
She lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with her husband, daughters and pets.
Tweet her @RebeccaFCaplan
