Advance Your Philanthropic Vision

CivicAIM is a facilitative consulting firm supporting grantmaking organizations. We offer customized services to advance the mission-driven endeavors of our clients and serve as a way to inspire others to embrace civic impact.

Expand Your Reach.

Our clients include private and family foundations, funder collaboratives and philanthropic giving circles. In every detail of our work, we develop, strengthen, and connect civic leaders as effective philanthropic advocates.

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Hiring a Philanthropy Consultant

When you hire CivicAIM, you gain the benefits of our objectivity, creativity, and insights into a variety of giving models. In short, we provide additional capacity and knowledge to maximize your grantmaking initiatives.

CivicAIM professionally supports private and family foundations, funder collaboratives and philanthropic giving circles in developing strategies and executing them in order to achieve the greatest impact for their philanthropic investments.

Additionally, CivicAIM brings the research and evaluation skills needed to dig in and gain a clear understanding of what’s needed for the change your organization hopes to achieve. Each grantmaker has unique needs. CivicAIM tailors its approach based on the particular challenges each organization looks to overcome and specific goals each organization seeks to achieve.

Service Overview

PROGRAM & IMPACT EVALUATION

Thorough analysis and proven evaluation strategies aimed to optimize grantmaking programs

INSIGHTS FOR STRATEGIC GIVING

Field-building knowledge and resources necessary to advance philanthropic missions and improve upon practice

PLANNING & EXECUTION

Customized, action-oriented plans and hands-on support to meet philanthropic goals

CONNECTIONS & COMMUNICATIONS

Strategies to elevate awareness, collaboration, and visibility of social change initiatives

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Our Clients Say It Best

“UWT needed a jump-start a new project while we staffed up. Erica was the ideal person to set us on the right path for this new effort. CivicAIM performed comprehensive research, went over-and-above on deliverables, and all in a timely way. Even after the project ended, she continued to reach back out when she ran across things that might be helpful for us, showing that not only is she good at producing work, but her heart is in the work, too! If we have additional consultant work in the future, CivicAIM will be the first we call.”

Adrianna Cuellar Rojas, President & CEO, United Ways of Texas

“We felt a need to have a consultant help us reflect on the past, present, and look at the legacy values we want to pass on to the next generation. To accomplish this, we felt that Erica could provide a much needed guidance. Her intuitiveness, academic, and practitioner perspectives in family foundations and solid understanding of our struggles to answer complex questions, involving diverse personalities, allowed us to appreciate our accomplishments and to build momentum for our future work.”

Cyndy Reed, Director, The Stanzel Family Foundation

“When I met Erica I was impressed with her openness as well as her attentive and responsive approach. She has proven to be an excellent asset to training Foundation Innovation’s growing network of local education foundations across Texas. I am specifically impressed with her ability to bring an honest, yet high reaching perspective. She has led start-up foundations, empowered them to aspire, and encouraged their success.”

Laurie Cromwell, Founder, Foundation Innovation, LLC

“After more than ten years funding educational programming to increase equity we honed our strategies toward the older student. Two years in, it was time to begin more rigorous evaluation methods. Erica brings a breadth of experience working with non-profits and other foundations. She is a great partner with whom to brainstorm. Her talents as a practitioner evolve the ideas into the day-by-day procedures necessary to produce healthy evaluation over time. Additionally, Erica rolls her sleeves up and does what it takes to get the job done no matter how difficult or complicated it may look in the beginning. We will continue to engage CivicAIM in future endeavors.”

Mary Ellen Pietruszynski, Executive Director, Sooch Foundation

“Erica’s insight into social enterprise made the 2015-16 Meadows Social Enterprise Fellows program a success. She has real-world training in the challenges nonprofit organizations face when experimenting with new financial models, growing high-potential programs, reaching new audiences, and (not-so-simply) building organizational capacity. Erica asks questions that matter and shares knowledge that is useful. Her expertise in this field will be an asset to any project or organization seeking to make an impact.”

Moira Porter, Senior Program Director, The University of Texas at Austin - RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service

“After over a decade of funding local education foundations throughout Texas, we were ready to share key lessons and progress of this funding initiative with our funder colleagues. Rather than take a spotlight approach, Erica was instrumental in designing a learning agenda that set priorities for the series of convenings we held across the state. From program design to engaging the right set of partners to facilitating the discussion, her approach was well planned and executed. She added value and objectivity to our vision of elevating awareness of our grant initiative. Because of this, we continue to partner with Erica and CivicAIM and highly recommend her counsel.”

Fred Markham, President, Texas Pioneer Foundation

“CivicAIM is a top-notch consulting firm. They are organized, thoughtful, thorough and incredibly personable. They also have an amazing grasp of the roles and responsibilities of foundations in advocacy and policy. Since 2013, CivicAIM has provided support and counsel to the Consortium. It is a true pleasure to be able to work with CivicAIM for our Texas Education Grantmakers Education Policy Symposium and Advocacy Day. I look forward to collaborating with Erica and CivicAIM more times to come!”

Jennifer M. Esterline, Executive Director, Texas Education Grantmakers Advocacy Consortium

Contact us today for a free consultation.

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