Leveraging Envoy’s Grantee Partnership Hub to Foster Peer Learning Opportunities

Since our founding, Envoy has partnered with family foundations and grant-making organizations to support a variety of initiatives focused on economic mobility and youth development. We 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. 

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.

To gain deeper insight into the application and value of the PLN Hub, Envoy connected with various foundation grantees, including 12 Plus and Philadelphia Outward Bound (POBS), to understand how they have used it to build out their program offerings across Greater Philadelphia. 12 Plus provides personalized academic and postsecondary advising, and POBS focuses on outdoor, experiential learning through teamwork, and character development.

Raymond John, CEO of 12 Plus, emphasized that the Hub’s grantee directory has been vital in sourcing potential partners, leading to new partnerships with other foundation-funded organizations. During conversations with POBS Executive Director, Justin Ennis, and Director of Education and Partnerships, Kim Glodek, the team shared how they use the Hub’s grant directory and MOU templates to help identify new funding opportunities and strengthen their program metrics. “The directory is super helpful, and it’s been great to access resources for strategic planning and program evaluation metrics” said Justin and Kim. 

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 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 Envoy’s Peer Learning Network model and the Grantee Partnership Hub,  including how we can support grantee capacity building, please reach out to the Strategy & Philanthropy team at salomon@envoy.us