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Advisory Council: Sheldon Mains

Sheldon Mains

Sheldon William Mains Consulting

Sheldon Mains helps nonprofit organizations improve service to their communities.

He has created, developed and implemented new programs.
He has helped nonprofit organizations use technology to tell their stories.
He has helped nonprofit organizations use technology to help organize communities.
He has helped nonprofit organizations use technology to better serve their communities.

He is passionate about using technology to help nonprofits tell their stories and advocate for important issues. Sheldon views technology as just one tool that can help organizations improve their communities and the service to their clients.
He believes that technology change should be combined with business practice and organizational changes to help organizations excel. His approach is no nonsense, no jargon. He can make an overwhelming task exciting.

In the six years Sheldon was Director of Technology Services at MAP for Nonprofits, he built MAP's technology program into one of the best nonprofit technology service providers in the country. He designed services, found funding, hired staff, marketed the services and managed service delivery for a variety of new and improved programs. During this time, he increased earned income by a factor of eight.

Sheldon is currently the vice chair of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, a national professional organization of people and organizations interested in improving the management of nonprofit organization. As vice chair he is chair of the membership and marketing committee and serves on the audit committee.

As the Director of Minnesota E-Democracy in the mid 1990s, Sheldon incorporated the organization as a not-for-profit corporation and obtained IRS 501.c.3 status, secured initial funding and developed the first public online campaign finance database for the 1996 election.

While at the State of Minnesota Sheldon developed the first state regulations on genetically modified organizations, helped establish the Minnesota Center for Victims of Torture, created and managed the public participation program for a state wide public strategic planning and benchmarking project and developed and managed the public education program on high level nuclear waste disposal.

Sheldon graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in electrical engineering and received a Masters degree from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs in public policy. At the Humphrey Institute, he specialized in social impacts of technology. He has taught in the Master’s program at St. Mary's college in the telecommunications department and speaks on nonprofit technology at a variety of conferences locally and nationally.