Stories of Impact

We have the privilege of working with many impact-driven leaders, organizations, and philanthropists. Each project is unique, but our clients are united by their desire to maximize impact. Here are a few highlights from 2023. 

a wind turbine standing in blue water

Structuring for impact.

Starting in the fall of 2022, we worked with a family office to set up a new climate fund that could utilize grants, investments and 501c4 contributions.

We led the client through a discovery process to decide on an impact vehicle structure that would best fit their needs, goals, and values.

Ultimately, we developed an LLC + DAF structure co-governed by the founders, led the successful search for an inaugural fund director, helped her to develop the initial landscape analysis, and continue to support the fund as they launch a multi-million dollar funding strategy in 2024.

Building an Integrated Life

We have worked with a family office since 2021 who cares deeply about environmental sustainability. The founding couple already expresses this value through their philanthropic initiatives, but wanted to align the operations of their personal properties.

We helped to develop team-wide principles to guide day-to-day decision-making, and a scorecard to measure progress. The scorecard includes ideal statements like “We avoid toxic chemicals,” and “We evaluate the social and environmental impact of our vendors and suppliers.” These statements are then evaluated and scored by the team each quarter.

Just 9 months in, the client has seen improvement across 90% of the impact statements, resulting in less packaging and waste, greater energy efficiency, and more recycling and composting.

Building the Field

Last year we had the opportunity to work with a membership-based organization to support the development of its long-term vision, theory of change, and strategy.

Over the course of 9 months, we participated in stakeholder interviews, internal and external working groups, and helped guide the strategic planning process with the leadership team.

The result is a new, ambitious strategic plan enthusiastically approved by the board to galvanize the organization’s leadership and membership base for greater impact, providing a living touchstone for staff, board members and the community.

Tracking Place-Based Impact

We worked with a funder focused on a single county who wanted to understand how their grantmaking was impacting people’s lives.

We helped them think through their North Star goals and work backwards to identify the metrics that would tell them if the region was making progress, differentiating between “context indicators” that are too big to control, and grantee metrics that are the direct result of their grantmaking.

We created a dashboard with visual representations of each metric tracked against comparable geographies over time, accompanied by a user guide to point them to exactly where the data would come from and how to keep it updated.

“Sharon Schneider…is a wonderful guide to aligning your heart and mind, allowing you to simultaneously find greater peace and do more good in the world.”

— Devin Thorpe, Superpowers for Good

 

[Integrated Capital Strategies] “offers both voice and direction to our collective desire to live with greater, positive impact — to combine purpose with our life practice.”

—Jed Emerson, The Purpose of Capital

Check out our other Impact Projects:

Executive Director Institute

This 4-month bootcamp for philanthropy executives provides targeted technical and experiential education to empower key donor staff to deploy dollars quickly and with confidence into high impact nonprofits and social enterprises.

Handbook for an Integrated Life

Sharon Schneider, a philanthropy consultant to some of the world’s most prominent families and companies, distills her expertise into pragmatic guidance you can use to create a value-centered life.

“While we all aspire to lead a life integrated with our values, everyone’s road has its own twists and flat tires along the way. Fortunately, Sharon Schneider has created a map to help us get closer to our destination.

So much of her narrative and framework resonated with my family’s experience as my wife and I built a family while also building Honest Tea, Beyond Meat, PLNT Burger, and Eat the Change.”

— Seth Goldman, Co-Founder & CEO, Eat the Change

 

“[Sharon’s work] made me look in the mirror and feel at odds with my own self – seeing the gap between my quotidian choices and the moral compass I purport to hold. Even me – someone who “does good work” in her day job, but knows deep down she can do more to co-create a better world.

Schneider holds a mirror to that struggle, lets us know we can do better, and gives us practical – if not inspirational – micro methods to nudge ourselves, and in so doing the world, to be the more just version of itself we all know it can be.”

—Maria Kim, President, REDF