CHALLENGE

RWJF doesn't just provide financial support. For its highest-potential grantees, the Foundation also invests in communications coaching, fundraising strategy, and long-term development support. But as that commitment grew, so did an operational reality: the Foundation was essentially rebuilding the same support infrastructure from scratch for each new cohort — pulling program managers away from higher-value work and making it difficult to deliver support consistently at scale. RWJF brought in Impact Collaborative and agency partners to help them work smarter, designing a systemic approach that could scale across a diverse portfolio of organizations without losing the personalized touch each one needed.

OUR WORK

As part of a cross-agency team, Impact Collaborative conducted internal research into how RWJF's support was being delivered and direct research with grantees to understand what they actually needed. The result was a scalable framework of tools and processes that gave Foundation program officers a consistent, streamlined way to deliver fundraising and sustainability support — reducing the operational burden of managing a growing portfolio while leaving plenty of room for each organization to tell its own story and pursue growth on its own terms.

IMPACT

The framework gave RWJF's most promising partners a path to lasting independence while meaningfully improving how the Foundation itself operates. Program managers gained a consistent, replicable approach that eliminated redundant work across cohorts and freed up capacity for deeper, more strategic engagement. More than half of participating organizations have since diversified their funding enough to stand fully on their own—an outcome that reflects the Foundation's deepest ambitions for the work.

SELECT ACTIVITIES

Communications strategy · Cross-agency collaboration · Fundraising diversification strategy · Grantee sustainability planning · Operational efficiency design · Scalable framework & playbook development · Strategic planning