A new structure to fuel “going big”

Back in January, I talked about where Progressive Multiplier has not been big enough for the movement and our commitment to good strategic growth in 2024 (not gross 1990’s sales slogan go big growth).  Our solution has three components - a new program, a restructured and expanded staff and a diversified approach to our own independent revenue generation (IRG).  You heard a bit about our new programs - the Catalyst, the Lab and the Convergence - last week.  (Are you sensing our reverence for the science of revenue generation?!)

I’d like to introduce the team behind that program and explain how we’ve reorganized our staff to better meet the movement’s needs and allow for growth.   Staff and team structure are catalytic capacities for revenue generation, so we are walking our talk and sharing here how we're tackling the capacity challenges we’ve identified while fueling our own growth with innovative approaches to IRG.  

To define our growth strategy, we partnered with Maria Tchijov, a PM grantee alum and movement leader, to conduct in-depth research with our key stakeholders. We interviewed movement groups, our staff, grantees, board members, funders, and potential partners. We found out that:

1. Groups value the deep strategic partnerships we build with them and want more of that.
2. There are groups doing innovative rev gen that need way more R&D money than PM has in the bank right now AND there are groups that need support to build and remediate rev gen infrastructure and implement IRG best practices.
3. Our supporters want to hear a movement impact story, not just a rev gen ROI story. (aka we may have a reverence for the science of rev gen, but our supporters need to hear about more than that)

These findings led us to reevaluate and refine our approach to better align with the needs and expectations of our stakeholders. As a result, we decided to make strategic adjustments to our staff structure. These changes are designed to strengthen our commitment to movement impact and our ability to provide targeted support where it’s needed most. 

Those deep partnerships with movement groups are the hallmark of Progressive Multiplier’s work, and Polly Stamatopoulos is at the heart of that.  In our new structure, she is stepping up to lead the Lab.  Polly brings over thirty years of progressive movement fundraising experience and will be working exclusively with our grantees who are seeking to exponentially scale their independent revenue generation through innovation that expands what we know about IRG for the movement.  (and we’re expanding our own IRG to provide the much larger grants these groups need - more on that next week)

We asked Kafele Thomas to conceptualize and launch the Catalyst based on his work as the founder and executive director of Atlas Center for Nonprofits.   

“The most rewarding part of this work is that I get to engage with organizations with various focus areas I care about, they are doing amazing work and can be change leaders if they get the support necessary.” Said Kafele. “The ethos of the Catalyst is that we’ve recognized that rev gen in a vacuum will not build sustainability for organizations. There’s additional work and support that groups need but are not receiving. Organizations need deep structural work and that is what we are hoping to provide through The Catalyst” 

We also recently added depth to our program bench and leadership team by turning to another grantee alum, Tiffanie Luckett.  With over 25 years of experience, she’s worked on mobilizing money from all types of sources, she joins us to help us organize our resources to meet the movement’s needs and add capacity in working directly with grantees on their IRG goals.

For Tiffanie, “PM fills a special niche in capacity building and strategic support, and in a previous role I benefited from the deep partnership that PM offered to help us conceptualize a new revenue line. I am excited to bring what I learned as a grantee to help PM be even more helpful to grantees, and to have a role in continuing to build up the movement with our unique blend of experimentation, best practice distillation, and storytelling.”

With the additional program pieces and given all we had learned about needing to manage projects with agility to give grantees a great experience, we asked Janet Davison to join the team as our first project manager. 

For Janet, working “alongside so many inspiring colleagues and contributing to the advancement of the progressive movement” is one of the things that excites her most about taking traditional project management to something as unique as what we do. “While our program staff works to multiply IRG within our partner organizations, I get to contribute my expertise behind the scenes to build systems that support them and their knowledge in support of the movement.”

And finally, we asked Johanna Olivas to join us and translate the program work into a movement impact story worthy of investment and use that story to forge new partnerships.

What a team we’ve got!  I couldn’t be more inspired by them or excited about the work they are digging into.  Be sure to stay tuned for a glimpse into our plans to make sure all movement groups can innovate how they generate their own money, and scale and sustain on their own terms in service of their missions.