Thrive AdvisoryService (Thrive) is a consulting service designed to support foundations that are deciding about how to build or grow a program of capacity strengthening support for their organization partners. Thrive was birthed and inspired by the LeadersTrust and the Resilience Initiative, and is now a project housed within the LeadersTrust.Led by Holly Delany Cole and Paula Morris, and supported by members of LeadersTrust, Thrive partners with foundation staff to facilitate their discernment and planning about the design and launch of capacity strengthening initiatives. We are co-planners. We serve as resources, guides and project managers to foundation staff as they consider how they want to support the organizations that they fund. Learn more about Thrive and our Perspectives on what we mean by trust-based capacity-strengthening here https://theleaderstrust.org/what-we-do/thrive-advisory-service/.

Founded by Paula Morris and Cory Pohley, Bandwidth Consulting is grounded in a practical understanding of, and respect for, what it takes to lead and manage social change organizations. Having worked for over 30 years at every level in nonprofits and philanthropy, we bring not only expertise and advice when needed, but also a willingness to help get important things done. Because leaders often know their priorities but simply lack bandwidth, we provide direct, hands-on-support building organizations’ internal capacity, strengthening their leadership, helping launch new areas of work, and sometimes simply giving nonprofit leaders some breathing room by taking important and urgent projects off their plate.

Served as a contract Program Officer with the Civil Society and Leadership Program at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Packard's CSL program invests in the strength of leaders and organizations to increase their capacity to achieve and sustain positive change. During my engagement on the CSL I supported grantees of the Environment and Science program in the U.S., Chile, Mexico, and Japan as they developed their plans for and grant requests to build their capacity leadership.

Responsible for the design, launch and growth of the Resilience Initiative over its first five years. With initial funding and continued support from the Packard Foundation, the Resilience Initiative has operated as a fiscally-sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) since our founding in 2017. Through partnerships with The LeadersTrust, Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation BUILD Program, the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity among others, there are now over 750 organizations that have been sponsored by their philanthropic partners to be able to participate in all of the Resilience Initiative offerings. The Resilience Initiative’s unique contribution and role is as a curator and delivery vehicle for a broad range of bite-sized, timely, flexible, easy-to-access leadership and capacity offerings. These include peer learning cohorts, 1:1 coaching, workshops, wellness series, a capacity grants program, and the Resource Hub, a staffed online platform with profiles of consultants and coaches across all areas of capacity. Describing our program as “offerings” is emblematic of the spirit of the Resilience Initiative: staff and board members of the participant organizations can join as many or as few of our offerings as they like at no cost to them – selecting those that feel relevant and that promise accompaniment and support on whatever is keeping them up at night.

Support for development of new program development for the FLA Program, including new work in support to building fundraising capacity for social change organizations.

I began work with the Fund's Flexible Leadership Program as a consultant when the program started in 2005, and became Program Director full-time in 2007. Working for social justice requires a combination of passion, leadership and practical, can-do skills. The Haas, Jr. Fund launched the Flexible Leadership Awards (FLA) program in 2005 to provide nonprofit organizations and their leaders with the resources they need to be effective.Based on extensive input from nonprofit leaders and others, the program provides long-term, custom-tailored leadership support to selected Haas, Jr. Fund grantees. The Flexible Leadership Awards allow the board and staff of nonprofit organizations to step back and think expansively about what their organizations want to achieve and the leadership challenges they have to meet to get there.Consultants supported by the Haas, Jr. Fund work with each organization to develop a plan for the use of their grant funds, and to identify and deploy the best resources to help them meet their leadership goals. Grantees have used their award funds to support coaching for staff and board leaders, strategic planning initiatives aimed at sharpening the focus of their organizations, board development and engagement, and succession planning, among many other activities.The FLA program started with an initial pilot of 14 organizations in the Bay Area. The program now serves 50 local, state and national organizations whose work is crucial to achieving the Fund’s program goals on issues ranging from marriage equality to comprehensive immigration reform. The FLA program is a fiscal project of the Tides Center.On the Haas Jr. Fund website, you can read the five year evaluation of the FLA program and watch a series of videos highlighting the key findings. The Fund looks forward to continuing sharing what we are learning with our grantees about what it takes to cultivate nonprofit leadership.

DPM Consulting, founded by Paula Morris, Cory Pohley and Kate Durham, offers fund development, planning, program development and other support to organizations and foundations:- Flexible Leadership Awards Program, Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund – FLA Plan Consultant and program planning and management support- Horizons Foundation - Interim Executive Director; Interim Development Director; grantwriter; consultant on grantmaking, leadership development and technical assistance programs; Hispanics In Philanthropy – Writer, researcher and grant proposal development;- A Home Away From Homelessness – Individual donor fund development, budgeting, grants;- Youth Treatment & Education Center (YTEC) – Writer, fund development planning, grantwriting;- Voluntary Service Overseas – Planning and managing US campaign to encourage increased applications from US professionals to VSO, an international volunteer agency; - The Community Technology Foundation of California - Organizational development consultant; - New Field Foundation –development of planning process and research strategy for Africa program;- Tides Foundation – proposal review and docket preparation for the Colin Higgins Foundation;- Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues - Author of “Starting a Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender Community Foundation: A Resource Guide”; - Northern California Grantmakers, Fifty Crows Foundation, Californians for Civil Marriage, Our Family Coalition, Pacific Center For Human Growth, COLAGE, Hands On Bay Area – Conducted foundation fundraising, prospect research and/or grantwriting.