If you’re lucky, a strong program will meet a critical phase when it’s ready to scale and increase its footprint. I’ve consistently helped organizations navigate this important stage, securing increased funding, navigating new geographies, and building up teams to seize upon these opportunities for greater impact.
When the Oslo Freedom Forum was awarded a $3.3 million grant to expand to regional hubs in South Africa, Taiwan, and Mexico for three years, the program turned from an annual event into a global movement. With a fantastic roster of local production, outreach, and communications teams, I devised unique creative and development strategies to ensure each event program was relevant to the cultural and political context of these global cities while maintaining the voice and vision of the brand. In 12 months, we introduced a series of vibrant events in Johannesburg, Taipei, and Mexico City that brought together a new network of grassroots activists, nonprofit partners, and civil society groups and a renewed attention on regional struggles for democracy.
The Voices for Economic Opportunity Incubator, originally scoped to support 10 organizations, was scaled in its first year to accommodate 18 additional groups, who were each urgently responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on economically vulnerable Americans. In a collaborative funding model with seven philanthropies, I led the effort to secure an additional $4M to expand the program, hire and oversee a team of 20+ staff and contractors, subgrant over $1M in production funding to participants, and engage all partners in regular reporting to share lessons learned. We ultimately achieved all of this and more, codifying a new program model for narrative change and helping every participant organization produce their final creative projects.