The Practice of Realignment
“The people most impacted have the answers. They are just separated from the resources.”
That distance is the problem Grants and Grit was built to address. Not a lack of good intentions, not a shortage of capital. A distance between funders and communities, between stated values and actual practice, between the people deciding how resources move and the people who know how they should.
Somewhere along the way philanthropy became a game. Organizations learned to contort themselves into what funders want to hear, funders learned to follow each other, and the gap got wide while nobody named it. The Realignment Practice is how we close it.
WHAT REALIGNMENT ACTUALLY MEANS
Most institutions have already done the equity audit, the strategic plan, the board retreat. They updated the language, sometimes the guidelines, occasionally the staff. And the distance is still there, because it was never a policy problem. It is a relationship problem, a perspective problem, sometimes a courage problem.
Realignment is the work of closing that gap for real. It looks different everywhere, but it always starts the same way: an honest accounting of where capital is actually going, why, and what would have to be true for it to go somewhere better.
HOW WE WORK
We do not start with your strategic plan. We start with what is actually happening. Who makes decisions and how. Where your board, donors, and program staff are disconnected. Which organizations in your portfolio are doing the real work and whether they have what they need to sustain it. What your team believes about the communities you fund, and how close those beliefs are to reality.
From there we build forward across strategy, structure, culture, and relationships. Funding strategy sessions, portfolio design, board and staff retreats, executive advisement, and direct organizational support are the entry points. The work itself is always realignment.
WHO THIS IS FOR
This is for funders ready to be honest. Program officers who feel the pull of what they knew before the golden handcuffs got comfortable. Executives navigating boards that have not been in community in decades. New staff already sensing the dysfunction without language for it yet. Leadership teams that know the gap between their values and their practice is real and want to close it.
If you want a consultant to validate decisions you have already made, we are not your fit. If you are ready to look honestly at how your institution moves capital and move it better, we are.
WHY GRANTS AND GRIT
We know what it looks like inside a foundation when a program officer cannot get the board to move, and inside a nonprofit when a director is contorting real work into the funder's language. We have run organizations, led grantmaking portfolios, and sat with donors, boards, and frontline workers. We know what the field needs and what funders are afraid of, and we use that in service of both.