Philanthropy, done more boldly

Identify. Accelerate. Elevate.

We partner with funders to turn passionate leaders and promising organizations into bolder investments with lasting impact.

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what is bolder philanthropy?

Bolder Philanthropy is a partner for foundations, family offices, and other 501(c)(3) grantmaking organizations ready to make their giving bolder, more exciting, and more impactful.Most foundations don't lack good intentions or capital — they lack a specific kind of capacity: finding promising leaders who aren't already plugged into philanthropic circles, rigorously vetting them without a full-time program officer, and turning a good idea into a fundable, well-designed project. That's the gap Bolder fills. We handle the sourcing, the vetting, the workshops, and the coaching. In addition to your resources, we ask you to bring your time and expertise too, because this is a partnership, not a transaction.You don't have to start at the beginning. Some funders come to us because they don't have the bandwidth to source and vet new organizations — that's Identify. Others already know who they want to work with and just need help running a workshop that turns a promising idea into a fundable project — that's Accelerate. And some want a partner for the deeper, months-long work of building an organization's capacity — that's Elevate. Use one, use all three, or start wherever your team already has a gap.

Why Bolder Philanthropy?

Bolder Philanthropy is built on two decades of grantmaking, program design, operational excellence, and professional development at major nonprofits, most recently several years running State Policy Network’s LaunchPad. That work surfaced a pattern. The leaders worth backing didn't start because they could write a business plan, they started because they were close to a problem and determined to fix it. But determination alone rarely gets you there. What stands in the way is usually one of three things: visibility, coaching to sharpen the idea, or the network and plan to build something lasting. Bolder Philanthropy exists to close those gaps, whether that means surfacing who's worth funding, testing a pilot worth the investment, or coaching a cohort until it's ready for a transformational gift.This approach is proven. Running State Policy Network's LaunchPad, Bolder Philanthropy's founder vetted more than 500 organizations working in education and poverty alleviation, put 45 of them through hands-on, in-person accelerator workshops, and brought roughly 20 vetted finalists to funders every year. Bolder Philanthropy brings that same proven approach to you directly at the scale you're ready for.

How do we partner?

Bolder Philanthropy exists to help funders find new ways to invest for bigger impact. Identify and Accelerate each stand on their own. Elevate is where you go deeper, either starting by identifying organizations or building on organizations that already have your confidence. Every engagement is customized to meet your philanthropic goals.From day one, we will work to understand your interests and goals with your philanthropic giving. We will build our partnership to achieve your goals. And we make sure as much support as possible goes directly to the causes and organizations you care about by keeping our program delivery focused, lean, and still effective.

Identify

Identify new leaders and organizations worth backing.We source and vet promising projects, organizations, and leaders. Often that means running a grant or prize that organizations can apply to win. It turns "I want to give here but don't know who" into a shortlist of finalists — each with a clear, measurable project and our vetting on their chances to succeed. You get a shortlist of strong candidates to consider supporting.Our lowest cost and shortest term partnership.

Accelerate

Accelerate promising ideas into an executable project.Partnering to accelerate projects is a more intensive engagement, typically 4–6 months. We'll source the best new ideas and projects to bring together in person, using co-creation to turn interesting ideas into executable (and pitchable) projects. Through a hands-on 2-day workshop — yes, you're invited — we sharpen an idea into a well-designed project with measurable results, ending in a pitch for the support it needs to launch. You decide which projects are the right fit for your support. Those that aren't funded still leave with a project and a pitch in hand that you made possible.

Here's what it looks like in practice.

Say you're interested in finding great new youth entrepreneurship programs in the Southeastern U.S. — programs that help young people from disadvantaged communities build their way out of the cycle of poverty.We set the goal together. Once we've defined exactly who you want to reach and what success looks like, we build a plan to identify the strongest candidates for a pilot program.We find the candidates. Sometimes that means issuing a Request for Proposals, sometimes it means combing through your own database of grant applications — often it's both.We select participants and start building. We work directly with the selected candidates to develop their ideas and prepare them for the pilot workshop.We handle the logistics — and the network. At the same time, we're planning the event and tapping your personal and professional network to find people who'll enjoy helping these teams rapidly develop their ideas.We run the workshop. It all comes together in a 2-day, in-person co-creation workshop, ending with each pilot team pitching their idea live.You choose who to support. From there, it's your call which programs earn your backing — and every team walks away with a real project and a real pitch, whether or not you fund them.

Elevate

Elevate a handful of passionate organizations into a community of superstar performers.Partnering to elevate organizations is our most intensive engagement, typically 9–12 months. Elevate starts the same way Accelerate does — sourcing ideas and running a hands-on co-creation workshop to turn them into real pilot programs — but doesn't stop there. We add coaching and professional development for the group, executing their pilot programs while also building stronger organizations. That coaching covers the areas that determine whether a strong pilot becomes a lasting organization: leadership development, board engagement, measurement and evaluation, communications, fundraising, and more. What emerges is a community, organizations that learn from each other, hold each other accountable, and deliver real results together. This is transformational work, the kind of giving that lets you turn a few passionate organizations into a lasting, connected network built to succeed. And you'll have the opportunity to make transformational gifts to the organizations that produced strong pilots you'll be proud to support.

This is Bolder Philanthropy. Not the same safe, familiar gift year in and year out. It's more hands on and, quite frankly, more fun. We find grantees worth knowing, test projects worth funding, and build communities of organizations worth talking about.

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Bolder Philanthropy is a service of Relenthy Advisors, LLC.