Grants and Grit did not start with a business plan. It started with a decision: to stop helping organizations win a game that was never built for them, and start changing how the game gets played.

Behind that decision are twenty-plus years across every layer of this field: grantmaking portfolios, nonprofit leadership, federal service, and co-founding a nationally recognized cultural institution. Years spent moving between donors, boards, and frontline workers, often as the only person in the building who had worked on all three sides.

What that taught us

Funding decisions are rarely made the way the process suggests. Relationships matter more than applications, trust moves money, and the communities carrying the most weight tend to get the most scrutiny and the least flexibility. Wealth built through risk somehow turns risk-averse by the time it becomes philanthropy. Boards rarely reflect the communities a foundation exists to serve. And the people closest to the work almost always know exactly what they need. None of this is anyone's personal failing. It is a system running on autopilot, which means it can be run differently.

So we built something different

You are not the problem. You are in a position to move something, and that is rare. We help you make the case internally, design the strategy, and build the relationships that get capital closer to the work that needs it.

The how lives in our methodology, the Realignment Practice.