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Arizona Leadership Accelerator
The Arizona Leadership Accelerator (AZLA) is an 18-month learning experience designed for Burton Family Foundation grantees who want to strengthen how they lead, how their organizations operate, and how they collaborate to solve tough challenges. The program includes 12 months of in-person and virtual cohort learning experiences, followed by six additional months of individualized coaching and implementation investment.
Participants will join a small community of peers who are also navigating complexity leading nonprofit organizations in Arizona. Together, they will explore adaptive leadership, test new approaches, deepen organizational capacity, and access tools and coaching that support real, lasting change.
About AZLA
The Arizona Leadership Accelerator is designed to support and promote leadership development among nonprofit professional across Arizona by facilitating the following learning outcomes.
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Lead more effectively through complexity and uncertainty. Strengthen cohort members’ adaptive leadership capacity by shifting from reactive problem-solving to mobilizing people to learn, adapt, and respond productively to complex challenges.
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Clarify and advance a high-leverage organizational challenge. Identify a clearly defined priority challenge and make tangible progress on it.
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Strengthen organizational capacity. Apply practical tools and frameworks that improve long-term organizational effectiveness.
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Build and sustain an enabling environment for change. Grow cohort members’ capacity to align people, structures, and resources to support sustained and sustainable change.
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Use reflection, feedback, and data to improve results. Integrate insights (coaching, peer feedback, tools/learning, etc) into ongoing leadership and organizational decisions.
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Engage peers as thought partners and contributors. Develop the trust and skills needed to learn in public, offer and receive peer advising, shift thinking about how collaboration happens, and contribute meaningfully to others’ progress.
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Contribute to a stronger nonprofit ecosystem. Extend learning beyond cohort members’ organizations to fuel the strength of the broader nonprofit landscape.
AZLA is designed for leaders who are:
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Leading in Arizona-based nonprofit organizations that have received BFF funding for two or more years and have an average annual operating budget of $5 million or less.
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In senior-level organizational leadership roles with decision-making authority or direct influence on decision-making who have been at their organization for a minimum of two years prior to applying.
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Experienced in understanding their organizational and community landscape, even if newly promoted to their current role.
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Ready to build capacity in planning, scaling, sustainability, and adaptive leadership.
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Interested in learning approaches that help leaders navigate complexity, not just identify technical fixes.
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Able to identify a meaningful challenge to work on at the organizational, system, role, or people level.
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Willing to experiment, learn publicly, incorporate feedback, and focus on contribution over credit.
The experience includes:
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Three in-person convenings
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Six to eight virtual learning sessions approximately every six weeks
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Up to 12 months of individualized coaching
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Applied learning between sessions
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A modest post-cohort financial investment opportunity to help participants implement their learning within their organization
Application Process
Applications for AZLA will be accepted via the Arizona Community Foundation's grant portal beginning Wednesday, April 8, 2026 through Friday, May 8, 2026. To access the application, please create an account in the portal. Once logged in, the application may be accessed using access code AZLApply.
By Friday, May 8, all applicants will:
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Answer a set of short-answer responses in the application portal
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Submit a letter of support from their supervisor and/or board chair
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Complete a DISC Inventory
Cohort finalists will also be required to participate in a final 60-minute interview on either Thursday, May 28, 2026 or Friday, May 29, 2026. Decisions will be communicated to applicants by Friday, June 5, 2026.
Information sessions and virtual office hours are available for applicants on the following dates: