“Grooming a Champion” 1. “Grooming a Champion” refers to the TransFormation Alliance’s capacity to find someone in Metro Atlanta with enough wealth, power and prestige who could leverage their voice and social capital to be a patron of TFA’s mission and galvanize wide-spread support. We received critical feedback from our interview respondents on how the TransFormation Alliance can amplify their voice through building strategic relationships with high net worth individuals. An example of this strategic approach in action would be the major collaborative efforts and significant investments poured into early childcare and education. Early childcare and education have received tons of philanthropic support and resources partially because the cause had
“We’ve got that age diversity, race diversity, organizational diversity, and we’re all working together in a very cohesive and sober manner”
a champion in Stephanie Blank. Stephanie Blank was groomed to be an educated and well-versed champion of the issues impacting early childcare and education and became a powerful voice and, in some ways, a conduit between organizations on the frontline doing important work and hard to reach wealthy donors and philanthropic networks with the capacity to invest. Recommendation: All proposed approaches should be done in phases and consider TFA’s priorities and constraints. However, we’d recommend developing a tactical plan for this strategic approach as early as feasibly possible. Identifying and grooming a champion takes a considerable amount of time. Initial steps may include developing a set of criteria to evaluate one’s overall fit and capacity followed by curating a list of potential candidates. Once the list has been narrowed down and your top candidates are identified, TFA still needs to assess interest, cultivate the relationship, and develop them to be outspoken ambassadors willing to leverage their sphere of influence in support of TFA. “Sense Making” 2. “Sense-making” entails helping stakeholders understand the strong connection between place based and people based interventions to encourage new interests in funding the TransFormation Alliance. As eTOD initiatives increase, there is a rising funding pattern in which funders are more inclined to support partnerships that target affordable housing, access to quality jobs, eTOD, climate change, and health disparities. In the landscape analysis, each of the nine alliances concentrated on at least four out of five of these focus areas. What differentiates the stronger alliances from weaker alliances, which had less funding, are the type of strategies used to target the five common focus areas. There is a strong correlation between an organization’s capacity to actively sense-make with potential funders and key stakeholders and its fundraising success. We can compare and learn from the stronger alliances who showed high efficiency in connecting people and place based issues. In terms of tactics for sense-making, stronger alliances developed comprehensive branding processes that unified focus areas into one narrative and leveraged reports to demonstrate interrelatedness of focus areas. Other methods included launching a series of initiatives that address each of their focus areas together in a holistic approach, and explaining to key stakeholders how their policy advocacy for each focus area is interconnected. Recommendation: TransFormation Alliance should develop a set of funding pitches that showcase its critical initiatives and use our art and culture commitment to help develop these narratives and connections. For example, new soccer fields in the West End are helping promote health through exercise, enhance climate resilience through transit, promote social cohesion, and create local jobs. Making sense of how focus areas are interconnected helps funders move beyond viewing issue areas as silos. The holistic vision encourages funders to support agendas that are addressing the multiple dimensions of racial equity that impact one another. The primary resource expended to identifying and grooming a champion is time, but the payoff can be great and well worth the effort in the long run.
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TRANSFORMATION ALLIANCE STRATEGIC ARTICULATION MAP & FUND DEVELOPMENT PLAN REPORT
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