The Management Assistance Group (MAG) strengthens visionary social justice organizations, leaders, and networks to create a more just world.  For thirty years, MAG has strived to meet our mission by: (1) evolving and utilizing innovative approaches to strengthening organizations, leaders, and networks, (2) conducting research on critical organizational issues faced by our clients, and (3) sharing our insights and experiences with the social justice sector and the nonprofit organizational development field.  Since 1980, we have partnered with thousands of organizations, leaders, networks, movements, and funders to create powerful social justice efforts and lasting change.

MAG has a history of innovating to meet the changing needs of social justice organizations, networks, and leaders to advance their cause.  At the time of its founding, MAG’s co-founders, Susan Gross and Karl Mathiasen pioneered the application of organizational development to address the unique challenges and needs of advocacy groups and created and refined a holistic, organization-wide approach to building powerful progressive advocacy organizations that integrated strategic planning, board development, fundraising assistance, and management strengthening.  They quickly became well-known for their insightful, seminal articles on organizational growth and governance that are still cited today in literature and trainings.  MAG later synthesized these earlier articles with newer insights and approaches in publications including: Seven Turning Points: Leading through Pivotal Transitions in Organizational Life; Strategic Planning that Makes a Difference and That’s Worth the Time; Boards Matter: Board Building Tools for the Busy Social Justice Executive; and Advancing Your Cause through the People You Manage: A Guidebook for Busy Leaders.

In the past decade, as organizations have attempted to achieve greater impact through working together, under Inca A. Mohamed's leadership, MAG has intensified its work supporting multi-organizational efforts.  This includes strengthening coalitions and networks and facilitating high-stakes meetings for funders and social justice groups.  Recognizing the important yet often misunderstood and undervalued role of networks in building a strong social movement, Robin Katcher conducted cutting-edge research whose findings were published in Nonprofit Quarterly as "Unstill Waters: The Fluid Role of Networks in Social Movements." To better support leaders, MAG, led by Mark Leach, developed a model of leadership coaching that aids leaders as they step into the work that their organizations and movements are calling upon them to undertake and stretch their leadership styles to be ever more effective, adaptive, and authentic.

Based on 30 years of experience strengthening not just single organizations but also individual leaders and multi-organizational efforts, MAG believes that while traditional organizational development approaches focused on strengthening individual organizations are valuable, they are often insufficient to meet the needs of today’s social justice groups.  Therefore under the leadership of Robin Katcher and Mark Leach, MAG is currently developing a more integrated approach to supporting and transforming social justice efforts -- one that strengthens individual organizations as well as networks, movements, and individual leadership so that together we can build broad, long-term political power, scale up impact, and win on a wide-range of progressive issues. MAG is committed to sharing what we learn in order to strengthen the social justice sector at large.