Join the leaders whose execution accelerates positive outcomes.
Active operators
Mission or money? Organization leaders feel the tension of this choice no matter what stage they’re at.
As an educator-turned-founder, I wrestled with this trade-off myself. After 2 decades of leading and advising world-changing organizations, funds, policy leaders and their teams, I have discovered that every organization has five key levers: product, business model, financing, operations, and culture. When you align all five areas with your mission and synchronize their growth at every stage of your organization’s lifecycle, something amazing happens—growth accelerates.
Impact-Centered Organizations ground, align, and ‘center’ their decisions in impact. They are fundamentally designed to move purpose and profits together without feeling the need to compromise on either. As someone who has helped build several ICOs over the decades, I have seen that organizations that harness impact as an accelerant to growth tend to outperform their peers at scale.
This journey is personal to me. I created ICOs to help leaders learn and adapt without sacrificing what matters. It’s a clear, human-centered roadmap that connects heart and bottom line. I’m excited to welcome you into the ICO journey
The ICO Operator’s Toolkit is not a whitepaper or a manifesto. It’s a structured guide that has helped leaders operationalize impact at every layer of their organization—without slowing down, and often speeding up, their scale.
Define your unmitigated success, in business, financial, and impact terms. Learn more!
Clarify your most critical milestones to guide decision-making and team focus. Learn more!
Run experiments that build conviction by defining failure before you invest. Learn more!
This system is built for future and current leaders, their teams, and their investors.
If you run, build, invest in, or support for-profit or non-profit organizations–that deliver meaningful value to society – or you want to in the future – you’ve found your tribe. Without sacrificing sustainability, scale, or returns, Impact-Centered Organizations™ quickly and deliberately:
Lead with purpose and results—without compromising either.
Align vision, strategy, and execution with impact at the core.
Back organizations that deliver impact as a driver of growth—not just a side metric.
Apply practical tools to influence systems, shift outcomes, and scale what matters.
Whether you're solo ideating, a team in growth mode, or a network of organizations delivering against a thesis, you can download the ICO Operators’ Toolkit™ - Summer 2025 edition for FREE to get started. Impact4Scale currently offers hands-on support in three formats to help you embed impact at the center of everything you do.
Join a peer group of leaders building with impact.
Structured programs for founders and exec teams ready to apply the ICO lens inside real-world operations—with expert facilitation, accountability, and cross-functional support.
Bring your team – or a portfolio of teams – together to align on what matters.
We configure and facilitate immersive partial, full-day, and virtual workshops that equip leadership teams to harness impact as an accelerant for growth. Facilitate the creation of your organizations’ Impact Model with guided questions, examples, and a path to your Next Steady State.
Spark a shift in how leaders think about impact, their roles, and the path to success through story-telling, real-world examples, passion, and humor.
ICO™ creator Karl Rectanus, tells stories, speaks at summits, motivates at leadership offsites, and helps build community, by helping audiences reimagine what it means to scale with purpose.
ICOs are designed to scale both revenue and impact as integrated priorities—not tradeoffs. Unlike nonprofits or CSR initiatives, impact isn’t peripheral. It’s how the whole company is built, led, and grown.
The ICO Toolkit was built by leaders, for leaders. It’s been used to grow real organizations. Think of it as the Business Model Canvas—but for purpose-led companies.
Founders, operators, and leadership teams who’ve already built something—but want to scale it without diluting its meaning. If you’re serious about using impact as a growth advantage, this is for you.
We believe this framework should be the new standard—like the Business Model Canvas was for for-profits. The better our ecosystem gets at building with impact, the stronger we all grow.