Aligna
Carrie Basas, through Aligna, serves as legal counsel and a strategic partner to Washington nonprofits navigating growth, transition, or organizational complexity. Her work bridges law and leadership, helping executives and boards make decisions that hold up legally and operationally.
Seattle, WA 98118-1302
Contact
Expertise
Boards/Governance
- Board coaching & training
- Board recruitment & development
- Board roles & responsibilities
- Board self-evaluation
Human Resources
- Coaching
- Diversity
- Executive director evaluation
- Executive transition management
- Human resource policies
- Leadership development & training
- Performance management
- Race & social justice
- Staff development & training
- Succession planning
- Team building/team coaching
- Workshop & training development
Legal/Compliance
- Legal services
- State & federal registration & reporting
Management & Operations
- Lean engineering/process improvement
- Operating policies/procedures
- Operations management
- Organizational analysis
Planning & Organizational Development
- Alliances & collaboration
- Business plans
- Earned income/social enterprise
- Emergency & continuity planning
- Executive advisor
- Mission & vision development
- Organizational development
- Planning
- Program development
- Starting a nonprofit
- Strategic planning
Turnaround Management & Mergers
- Mergers
- Turnaround management
About Aligna
Carrie Basas is a nonprofit attorney, strategist, and founder of Aligna (https://wearealigna.com), a legal and strategic advisory practice supporting organizations facing complex, high-stakes decisions. As a former executive director and attorney of more than twenty years, Carrie maintains an active legal practice in Washington State, advising nonprofits and foundations on governance, structure, risk, and compliance. She is often engaged when organizations are navigating moments that require both legal clarity and careful judgment, including leadership transitions, conflict, restructuring, and growth.
Her legal services include:
- Bylaws and governance design
- Fiscal sponsorship and nonprofit formation and wind-down
- Mergers, restructuring, and organizational transitions
- Employment and independent contractor relationships
- Nonprofit compliance under Washington law
- Compliance and accessibility guidance
Through Aligna, Carrie also serves as a strategic partner to executive leaders, including for some organizations, as a fractional Chief Strategy Officer or senior advisor role. In these engagements, she works alongside leadership teams to navigate interconnected governance, operational, and inclusion decisions in real time.
Strategy partnerships may include:
- Acting as a fractional Chief Strategy Officer or executive advisor
- Supporting leadership through complex or time-sensitive decisions
- Governance and decision-making redesign or training
- Organizational alignment and priority-setting
- Facilitation of retreats, conflict navigation, and cross-team alignment
- Strategic readiness during transitions, scaling, or emerging risks
Carrie’s work is grounded in the Structure of Inclusion and The Access Wheel™, a decision-making framework that helps organizations align values, constraints, and long-term impact. Her approach focuses on helping organizations translate commitments into decisions that are durable, lawful, and grounded in practice and values.
She is especially well-suited for organizations navigating complexity, including growth, leadership change, governance challenges, and accountability to community, and who need an advisor who can integrate legal insight with strategic clarity.
Services are offered through Aligna, a disability-led and LGBTQ and woman-owned business. Legal services are limited to Washington State.
Her legal services include:
- Bylaws and governance design
- Fiscal sponsorship and nonprofit formation and wind-down
- Mergers, restructuring, and organizational transitions
- Employment and independent contractor relationships
- Nonprofit compliance under Washington law
- Compliance and accessibility guidance
Through Aligna, Carrie also serves as a strategic partner to executive leaders, including for some organizations, as a fractional Chief Strategy Officer or senior advisor role. In these engagements, she works alongside leadership teams to navigate interconnected governance, operational, and inclusion decisions in real time.
Strategy partnerships may include:
- Acting as a fractional Chief Strategy Officer or executive advisor
- Supporting leadership through complex or time-sensitive decisions
- Governance and decision-making redesign or training
- Organizational alignment and priority-setting
- Facilitation of retreats, conflict navigation, and cross-team alignment
- Strategic readiness during transitions, scaling, or emerging risks
Carrie’s work is grounded in the Structure of Inclusion and The Access Wheel™, a decision-making framework that helps organizations align values, constraints, and long-term impact. Her approach focuses on helping organizations translate commitments into decisions that are durable, lawful, and grounded in practice and values.
She is especially well-suited for organizations navigating complexity, including growth, leadership change, governance challenges, and accountability to community, and who need an advisor who can integrate legal insight with strategic clarity.
Services are offered through Aligna, a disability-led and LGBTQ and woman-owned business. Legal services are limited to Washington State.