Funders

RoadMap greatly values its partnerships with foundations and philanthropic serving organizations. We have deep experience forging pathways to help foundations provide capacity-building support for and to their grantees. These pathways have also boosted the internal work of foundations, along with that of its networks supporting funders committed to serving social justice movements, organizations and leaders.

If you are a funder interested in exploring how to work with RoadMap, below are some common ways we work directly with foundation partners. We also serve foundations as grantees.

• Cohorts: Your foundation could form a cohort of grantees that would receive our capacity-building support. We support cohorts of any size by matching your grantees with consultants from our network that have the skills, experience, and particular expertise needed.
• Tailored support: Program officers often contact us because they have a small number of grantees that need tailored, long-term support (e.g., leadership transition, board development, sustainability, resource development) and the foundation has decided to make a significant investment in a few organizations experiencing a moment of growth or opportunity. We work closely with the foundation to resource that work, and also work with the client to support a defined project that will help them through their most challenging or transformative capacity building project.
• Coaching: Foundations often ask us for coaching support. Our robust network of seasoned coaches are available to work with grantees as well as foundation staff.
• Internal capacity building: While we are often asked to partner with foundations to support their grantees, RoadMap also has a long history of directly providing them with capacity-building support. We have a number of consultants in the RoadMap network who specialize in providing foundations with a range of capacity-building services. 

Why Work with RoadMap?

We have been hosting intentional dialogues with funders about the need to provide general operating support across the movement to intermediary capacity building shops—particularly those led by people of color. Because capacity building as a sector is often under-resourced in relation to the growing demand of organizations needing such services, RoadMap has become a convener of and bridge builder between capacity building shops and foundations. 

Our goal is to help to strengthen the collective ability of capacity-building shops to meet this demand and bring our work to scale in these turbulent and transformative times. In that spirit, we want to express our gratitude to Borealis, The California Endowment, Hewlett Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Color Congress, and Ms. Foundation for their general operating support to RoadMap. 

And here are some additional key ways we can develop capacity-building initiatives for grantee organizations:

• We offer funders the ability to provide in-depth capacity building services to their grantees without the high cost and staffing time required to develop an in-house program.
• We help each funder to design a one-stop capacity building program tailored to meet grantee needs. Our program includes conducting organizational assessments, full-scale implementation of capacity-building services, vetting, and matching consultants to grantees and conducting quality assurance and evaluation.
• Our assessment tools, My Healthy Organization and Our Healthy Alliance, provide an overall picture of performance, enabling RoadMap to develop a customized capacity building program to address the organization, alliance, or cohort’s needs.
• We provide value-added services, such as ongoing e-learning activities to continually build grantee capacity.
• Our field building approach promotes regular peer-to-peer learning exchanges among social justice groups, thereby providing greater return on investment.