Meet Our Strategic Advisor
Darin Hollingsworth: Executive Coach, Fundraiser, Leader
Discover the journey and passion that led Darin Hollingsworth to join Guiding Good, a beacon of hope and support for countless missions.
Darin Hollingsworth
Darin Hollingsworth is a fundraiser, executive leader, and coach. He is speaker and facilitator on various leadership topics including gratitude and appreciation at work, compassionate leadership, and organizational culture.
From a perspective that starts with gratitude, Darin empowers clients to build upon professional strengths and face challenges with curiosity, confidence, and expertise. Building relationships and telling stories are keys to everyone’s professional success. Darin helps fundraisers, executives, and leadership level volunteers embrace and improve these skills with creativity, research, and best practices.
While Darin is not an expert in equity, diversity, and inclusion, he is a perpetual student and contributor to conversations that help people to feel seen, heard, included, and empowered.
Educational and Professional Background
A Foundation of Knowledge and Experience
Darin Hollingsworth serves as a Strategic Advisor Guiding Good, where he focuses on individual and organizational coaching as well as facilitating meaningful workshops, seminars, and retreats. He specializes in relationship based fundraising, as well as boards, executives, and talent in transition.
Darin is a native of Memphis, TN where he began his philanthropy career with a major healthcare system in the region working on employee giving, annual giving, events and major gifts. Prior to embarking on his journey in nonprofits Darin also refined his skills in relationship based work as a successful sales professional. While still in Memphis, he transitioned from healthcare to another of his passions and worked in the arts at a regional art museum.
Life and work took Darin to Las Vegas in 2000 where he joined the Foundation and College of Business at UNLV as Director of Development. That role offered more opportunities for the spectrum of fundraising including annual giving, major gifts and event based fundraising. Several College of Business alumni recognized Darin’s approachable personality and ability to build meaningful relationships quickly and he was recruited to work as a Financial Advisor for a group that wanted to bring philanthropic advising for their clients interested in giving and supporting the community. Darin then moved on to be the President and Executive Director of the Liberace Foundation and Museum.
Throughout his career colleagues and friends looked to Darin for encouragement and expertise in navigating their careers with the goal of creating a blended work-life. Additionally, Darin became a diligent student of research based best practices in organizational culture with an emphasis on gratitude and appreciation in the workplace. In 2010 he began to pursue coaching and consulting as a full time venture.
Darin Hollingsworth: Guiding Good
Darin has a passion for helping nonprofit organizations and professionals move through a continuum of surviving to thriving to flourishing. He blended his own life and career with more work as a senior philanthropic advisor for a national children’s healthcare nonprofit while still maintaining a coaching client base. An additional passion for Darin is helping professionals blend self-care with professional success with particular focus on mental health.
As a skilled facilitator for teams and groups, Darin brings energy, enthusiasm, expertise, and approachability to create engaging and meaningful experiences that benefit the hosting organization and the individual participants. Darin also produced and hosted a podcast, “Working Gratitude,” with over 70 episodes from 2012 to 2020. Podcast guests included a wide range of professionals from teachers and artists to executives inside and outside the nonprofit sector.
Darin
Working to focus his life and work in the direction of his dreams, talents, and skills Darin cultivates relationships with clients based on these values:
Gratitude
Accountability
Authenticity
Curiosity
Kindness
Compassion
Because Darin has worked on a blended life, in every community where he has lived and worked he has volunteered with organizations on boards and committees that align with his passions. One primary focus for volunteering is mental health and suicide prevention. Darin openly shares his journey with depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress.
Some of Darin’s other personal passions include his 16 year old dog “Herbie the Love Pup,” living in Jackson, TN with his best friend – his Mom, traveling as both a tourist and trained tour director. Darin found a creative outlet during the pandemic – painting kindness and gratitude rocks to share anonymously in his community and in his travels, as well as some special projects like contributing over 50 painted stones to an effort to build suicide awareness.
“We are all under the same big ole sky and take in the same air. What if we look for more that we find beautiful and similar rather than ways we see things differently!?
Darin Hollingsworth
Join Us in Making a Difference
Are you ready to be a part of something bigger? At Guiding Good, we believe that every action counts. Sign up for our newsletter to stay updated on our latest initiatives, volunteer opportunities, and ways you can contribute to our mission. Together, we can create a brighter future for the communities we serve. Join us today and be the change you wish to see in the world.