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Design for Social Impact: A Trust-Based Partner for Grantee Capacity Strengthening

 

Empowering Your Grantees, Amplifying Your Impact

At Design for Social Impact, we act as your trusted delivery partner—providing equity-centred training and coaching that amplify the impact of your strategic investments. Our programmes help grantees strengthen leadership, learning, and organisational health, without adding administrative burden.

You seek to provide responsive, adaptive, non-monetary support that bolsters leadership, capacity, and organizational health without imposing additional administrative burdens. At Design for Social Impact, we act as your trusted delivery partner, providing expert-led, equity-centered training and coaching that aligns with your trust-based values and amplifies the impact of your strategic investments.

 

We support your shift from performative DEI to systemic, anti-oppressive practice—helping grantees lead change from within their own contexts. Our programs are co-designed to respect the lived expertise of your partners, strengthening their ability to generate useful evidence for their own decision-making—not just for funder compliance.

 

What We Offer: Two Pathways to Deeper Impact

We provide tailored, co-designed non-financial support through two comprehensive programs. Our approach helps organizations embed evaluative thinking and equity-centered design into their DNA, fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptation.

 

1.Research Design for Social Impact: This program equips your grantees with the tools to conduct anti-oppressive research, ensuring that their work is grounded in the authentic needs and voices of the communities they serve. Participants learn to challenge traditional evidence standards and generate insights that lead to more equitable and impactful interventions.
 

2.Design for Social Impact Lab: This accelerator program guides grantees through the process of designing, building, and launching equity-centered program and policy interventions. It is a hands-on experience that moves from theory to practice, enabling organizations to create solutions that are both innovative and sustainable.

 

 

How It Works: A Seamless and Respectful Process

 

Our partnership model is designed to be light-touch for you and deeply impactful for your grantees.

  • Light-Touch Intake: We use information your grantees have already submitted to you, eliminating the need for additional administrative tasks or baseline reports.
  • Accessible and Adaptive Delivery: Modules are delivered live online or in-person and are designed to be accessible for small and community-led organizations. We believe in co-designed adaptation, reflecting the unique context, language, and existing practices of your partners. We do not introduce or impose
  • We resist universalist standards of evidence, ensuring approaches are grounded in local epistemologies and community-defined success.of evidence or evaluation.
  • Ongoing Support: Our programs include group coaching cycles focused on application, reflection, and peer learning, with optional clinic sessions for grantees needing bespoke support.

 

Why Foundations Partner with Us

Foundations like yours are actively seeking ways to:

  • Offer non-financial support that genuinely reduces administrative burden for their grantees, moving away from extractive practices.
  • Strengthen partners’ ability to generate useful evidence for their own decision-making, fostering internal learning cultures rather than just funder compliance.
  • Shift towards trust-based philanthropy and capacity building that respects and builds upon lived expertise, empowering community-led organizations.
  • Address and dismantle systemic oppression within the philanthropic ecosystem by supporting grantees in developing anti-oppressive practices.

Our role is to act as a delivery partner that aligns seamlessly with your trust-based values, providing skilled facilitation, grounded methodology, and practice-oriented support that directly addresses these critical needs.

We help you narrow equity and power gaps and amplify the voices and community-centred priorities of your grantees.

Intended Outcomes: Tangible Growth for Your Grantees

By partnering with Design for Social Impact, your grantees will experience transformative growth, leading to:

  • Integration of evaluative thinking into everyday decisions and program design, making them more adaptive and effective.

  • Enhanced capacity to conduct anti-oppressive research, ensuring their work is culturally relevant and ethically sound.
  • Development of equity-centered program and policy interventions, leading to more just and impactful social change.
  • Strengthened leadership and organizational health, fostering resilience and long-term sustainability.
  • Increased ability to articulate and demonstrate their impact in ways that are meaningful to their communities and aligned with their missions.

Partnership Packages: Investing in Transformative Capacity

We offer flexible partnership packages designed to meet the diverse needs of your grantee portfolio. Each package ensures a high-quality, impactful experience for participating organizations.

We believe that when funders model trust and invest in learning as care, they unlock deeper systemic change. Our role is to bridge philanthropic intention with community wisdom—creating the conditions for equity, not just the language of it.

Ready to explore a partnership?

Email [email protected] to discuss a tailored proposal or upcoming cohort schedule or book a consultation here

All packages include comprehensive training modules, facilitated group coaching, and access to our expert faculty. We encourage foundations to reach out for a customized proposal tailored to the specific needs and goals of their grantee network

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