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Capacity building for the human-services sector

Good organizations fail for boring reasons.

Missions do not fail for lack of heart. Organizations across this sector are funded to deliver programs and starved of the infrastructure that makes program delivery survivable. We build that infrastructure. Then we hand it to you.

Four to six weeks, a fixed fee, and a written recommendation — including a recommendation not to hire us, if that is the honest answer.

Scaffold in place
The problem

Does this sound like your organization?

You are compliant, and you could not prove it on short notice.

The same family or client is entered into four different systems.

One person knows how everything works, and everybody knows who it is.

Audit season is a scramble, and last year’s finding came back.

You cannot explain your indirect cost allocation without a phone call.

Growing means hiring administrators, and you cannot afford administrators.

None of that is a competence problem. It is a capital problem. Infrastructure is a one-time build with a multi-year life, and nonprofit funding is annual and restricted — so the build never happens. That is the gap we exist to close.

How we work

Three things happen, in this order.

STEP 1

We teach and we build

Finance systems, workforce architecture, governance apparatus, compliance and evidence design, technology, and software — designed and built with your staff, alongside the training that lets them run it. Not recommended in a report.

STEP 2

We document and transfer

Written for the person who will operate it, not for an auditor. Every function gets a named owner inside your organization before we finish.

STEP 3

You run it

Every engagement ends with a sustainability scorecard: what you can run without us, what you cannot, and who on your team owns each remaining gap. That is how we judge whether we did our job.

We started in licensed child welfare, the most document-intensive corner of the sector.

An agency there is judged not on whether it complies, but on whether it can produce the file. If it works there, it works anywhere.

Access
40%

of our work is delivered free or below cost.

Subsidized intensive assistance for small and resource-constrained organizations, a public library of tools anyone can take, and convenings that bring the sector together. Our fees carry the organizations that can pay. Grants, sponsors, and donors carry the rest.

What you pay
Standard program rate
100%
Reduced rate
60–80%
Deep subsidy
25–50%
Scholarship
0–20%
Sponsored cohort
Nothing

Published, applied consistently, and decided on your budget and the community you serve — not on how well you negotiate. If cost is the reason you have not asked, ask anyway.

Independence

Capacity without control.

We build the systems an organization runs on. That is a position of real access, and it is worth being precise about the limits we hold.

No governance authority

No board seat, no vote, no veto, no membership, no reserved power — at any organization we serve.

No governance work

We do not prepare your board packets, draft your conflict determinations, or touch your Form 990. Those belong to your directors and your own advisors.

An information boundary

What we learn with one organization stays there. Our staff sign that individually, and it survives the engagement.

Your identity only

Everything your families, staff, and funders see carries your branding. Ours does not appear inside your systems.

Read the full independence statement

Start with a diagnostic.

Four to six weeks, a fixed fee, and a written recommendation — including a recommendation not to hire us, if that is the honest answer.