From Connection to Collaboration: How the Envoy Grantee Partnership Hub Strengthens Nonprofit Networks and Funding Opportunities

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Key Takeaways

• The Envoy Grantee Partnership Hub was created to help foundations strengthen grantee engagement through centralized access to resources and peer learning opportunities.

• Grantees use the Hub to streamline reporting, access critical tools, and build partnerships that expand their impact.

• Looking ahead, the Hub has the potential to attract new donors and enable pooled funding by showcasing grantee impact to external audiences.

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Since our founding, Envoy has partnered with family foundations and grantmaking organizations to support a variety of initiatives focused on economic mobility and youth development. We work with foundations at critical junctures in their growth by engaging in strategic planning and organizational development support. We also design and facilitate peer learning networks among grant recipients, helping build communities of practice and learning cohorts focused on collaboration and knowledge sharing.  Through these efforts to support foundations in their quest to better engage their grantee networks, Envoy created the Grantee Partnership Hub, an online resource meant to increase engagement and connect grantees to resources, tools, and new partnership opportunities. The Grantee Partnership Hub houses key information about a foundation’s grant cycle and renewal process, profiles on other grantees in the network, and external tools that help address grantee needs related to strategic planning, fundraising, and evaluation. Unlike traditional CRM systems, the Grantee Partnership Hub is meant to be a tool for funders and grantees alike, opening up new opportunities for organizational collaboration and informed decision making. 

So far, Envoy has deployed Grantee Partnership Hubs in collaboration with a variety of foundations and funders, supporting peer learning communities and grantee networks to serve as internal tools for collaboration and engagement. Grantees routinely use the Hub to access key resources and information related to foundation reporting and grants management. The Hub has also become an important resource for identifying and leveraging new tools to help with organizational planning, partnership management, fundraising and grantwriting, budgeting, financial forecasting, and more. Grantees have also found themselves leveraging the Hub to engage peer organizations and develop new partnerships that expand program services and increase impact. For example, in Philadelphia, the Hub connected several public schools looking to improve their school climate with community organizations focusing on student mental wellness and counseling services, yielding intentional, year-long programming that has created excitement among faculty, staff, and students. We have found the Hub to be a valuable resource for both Foundations and grantees alike as collaboration and engagement among organizations increased significantly. 

As we consider future opportunities for a Grantee Partnership Hub, we are excited about the prospects of it becoming a tool with an external facing application, which can help draw in potential funders and supporters. By taking individual grantee profiles, which include key details about personnel, services offered, and program outcomes, and publishing them for outside audiences, new individuals and foundations can learn about the impact being made by nonprofits and choose to invest in those proven intervention models. This can help broaden and diversify donor bases and allow organizations to access new and reliable funding streams. Foundations can also benefit from this approach, allowing grantmaking institutions to create a pooled funding model that combines smaller contributions from many donors to create a large, concentrated fund that can help address organizational challenges and scale evidence-based programs that have been vetted by foundation staff. 

Envoy is excited about deploying this model to other foundations and grantmaking institutions that are interested in ways to further engage their grantee networks, while also providing peer-to-peer learning and increased access to critical resources that can help address challenges around organizational development, sustainability, and growth. To learn more about the Grantee Partnership Hub and how it can support grantee capacity building, please reach out to the Strategy & Philanthropy team at salomon@envoy.us