Every hour spent on a grant application is less time to change the world.
At Movement Strategy Center, our fiscally sponsored projects are led by activists and environmentalists, storytellers and movement-builders. They do crucial work, from distributing fresh food to advocating for the formerly incarcerated.
But many of these leaders have limited experience fundraising. They face significant barriers to raising money, including but not limited to systemic racism faced by our many BIPOC leaders.
Equipped with a grant for enhancing FSP services from the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation, we at the Movement Strategy Center (MSC) saw an opportunity to expand our service model to support financial sustainability with a co-design approach.
To start, a cross-departmental cohort of MSC staffers formed a Fundraising Task Force and through workshops and feedback, FSP project directors were able to co-create the program. Led by Alejandra García Lezama, Project Advisor, and Sophie Lan Hou, Director of Innovation and Strategic Initiatives, the collective developed a program to provide our projects with fundraising support.
We were guided by using MSC’s Just Transition lens, as well as the principles of Community-Centric Fundraising, which acknowledge the challenges minority-led organizations face, as well as the donor-centric models and scarcity mindsets of philanthropy at large. Our role in the pilot was not only to attempt to close that gap in resourcing but build confidence and share an abundance stance while ensuring each participant could directly address their most important challenges.
How it works
In the program, projects completed a survey asking what fundraising supports they most needed. Overwhelmingly, they chose funding for contractors with highly-engaged networks and backgrounds in grant writing and research. Participating leaders had neither the connections nor the staff to do this work; further, as many are BIPOC, they face additional challenges in accessing resources.
We created a system to measure fundraising readiness and financial health, allowing for equitable allocations of consulting hours. Informed by the partners’ needs for representation and the collective demand for values alignment, consultants were paired with FSPs. Finally, success metrics were established. Revenue was important, but it was essential to foster equity and partnership between FSPs and funders while cultivating the skills needed to continue seeking support.
The results speak for themselves: That initial $150,000 grant resulted in $260,000 in funding among six projects over the course of a year, with over $1.5 million in pending applications. Participants report increased confidence in their ability to apply for grants aligned with their missions, state the consultants understood their needs and values, and believe they are able to exercise more power in funder relationships.
Now, with an additional grant from the same funder, the program returns for a second year as the Fundraising Support Initiative (FSI), and will be informed by the first cohort’s evaluations. Led by García, the FSI will welcome new and returning FSPs.
Going forward, MSC hopes to secure the funding to make this a core offering that can serve as a model to other fiscal sponsors who want to help their project build a sustainable future.
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