Grantors and Grantees
Grantmaking done well is harder than it looks. So is competing for grants that are worth winning. Money tied to impact is inherently complicated. It needs a clear direction, not just toward the change you want to make, but toward the systems that hold up under pressure and tell you whether you actually did what you set out to do. We have worked on both sides of that equation, with organizations ranging from global retailers and hospital systems to advocacy nonprofits and early-stage health ventures, across sectors and six continents. Everywhere but Antarctica, though we’re game.
It’s hard to know you’re on track without a map. We use data in all its forms to track impact, both actual and potential, and we like to make it pretty and easy to understand. We keep tools like Power BI and Tableau in our back pocket, and we build interactive dashboards that show where you are, where you’re going, and how long it’ll take to get there.
Grantors
The most important question in grantmaking isn’t how to run a clean process. It’s what you are actually trying to change, and whether your program is built to get you there. We work with funders to get that question answered first. That means we get specific about priorities, the populations and places you want to reach, and what success actually looks like before any money moves.
From there, we help you build the systems to support it. How applications come in, how decisions get made, how you communicate with the people you are trying to support. For funders who want a full-service partner, we can also manage the day-to-day. But the work we find most useful, and most interesting, is helping funders figure out whether their program is doing what they designed it to do, and what to change when it isn’t.
Measuring real impact is harder than counting participants, and we think that’s where the most important work happens. We help funders define what meaningful change looks like for their specific program, build frameworks to track it honestly, and ask the harder questions when something isn’t working.
Grantees
Not every organization should pursue every grant, and we will tell you that directly. Before anything else, we help grantees think through whether an opportunity is actually a fit, what it would take to absorb it, and whether the programming it requires is something you can actually deliver and sustain.
When the answer is yes, we help you build a program concept that reflects genuine need, aligns with what the funder is actually looking for, and holds up to scrutiny. Grant writing is part of that work, but it’s a smaller part than most people expect. A strong program idea is most of the battle.
Once funding is secured, we help you create the internal structures to support new programming, track impact in ways that go beyond headcounts, and report findings that are useful to your funders and to your own organization. If we are with you from the start, sustainability gets built into the design. If we come in midstream or at the end of a grant cycle, we help you figure out what to do if a grant isn’t renewed, and that means considering whether the work is worth continuing. Sometimes that takes some difficult conversations, and we work through those with you.