What does I.G. Advisors actually do? - 2023 Edition
Because we work on such a wide range of things at I.G. Advisors, I often get asked ‘what do you actually do?!’
We work across the nonprofit, philanthropy and business sectors to create social and environmental change by providing strategy and management consultancy, activation support, and a sector transformation practice. No two years (or days!) at I.G. are the same, but to help you understand the breadth of things our brilliant team can help you with, I’ve put together this summary of all our 2023 work (that we’re allowed to talk about publicly), with links to some of the brilliant clients we supported and partnered with across the world last year.
Where I.G. worked directly (yellow), and where we worked indirectly through our clients (white).
Our roots are in the nonprofit world, and in 2023 we developed fundraising strategies and provided in-depth fundraising coaching, training and collateral creation for the brilliant teams at Fundacion Avina (Latin America), Hoxton Hall (UK), Transform Schools (India), MQ Mental Health (global), Freedom Fund (global), The Big Give’s women and girls match fund participants (UK), and Women’s Link Worldwide (Latin America & East Africa). This work supported an increase in funding to issues as diverse as economic equality, education, modern-day slavery, gender justice, the arts and mental health. We’re pleased to say those last two are now also Mackenzie Scott grantees, which is very exciting!
Rachel teaching the 100x Impact Accelerator social ventures.
Doing any kind of social impact work is really tough without independent support and guidance. We’re big advocates of leadership, team and executive coaching, and we have years of experience coaching everyone from early-career fundraisers and programme workers through to senior executives in big NGOs or Foundations. In 2023, as well as providing fundraising and professional coaching to dozens of our #FixTheFlow Fellowship Fellows, we also coached amazing staff and leaders from Ashiana Network, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Stronger Foundations for Nutrition, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Rachel & Harriette at the launch of Kurt Geiger’s Business By Design
One thing that sets our work apart is our in-depth connections with the global movement of businesses who are working to create social and environmental impact. Our corporate philanthropy and impact work in 2023 involved continuing to support fashion company Kurt Geiger with their Kurt Geiger Kindness Foundation (which we helped to design and launch in 2022), as well as working with them to develop a Youth Council and design and launch Business By Design, a free year-long academy for young people (18-20) from underrepresented backgrounds who want to enter the creative industries. We also helped The Bicester Collection (who run luxury retail villages like Bicester Village around the world) to audit and refine their DO GOOD charity initiatives and worked on their Unlock Her Future Prize, which supports women social entrepreneurs with start-up funding.
Emily & Caitlin speaking at Friends Provident Foundation Conference
Our core service offering at I.G. is strategy and management consultancy, to which we bring a design-thinking and participatory approaches. All our strategy processes bring a mix of stakeholder engagement, consultation, collective design workshops, research and strategy development to ensure our clients have equitable, sustainable and ambitious strategies at the heart of their work.
In 2023, we developed a new impact, governance and communications strategy for New Perimeter, a non-profit initiative of global law firm DLA Piper that works to ensure the law, and lawyers, play a part in creating a fairer, more sustainable and just future for all. Our strategy and management consultancy projects with the World Food Programme (WFP) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) were largely confidential, but our work with the BMGF’s Philanthropy and Partnerships Team specifically focussed on strategies to develop greater giving cultures in high-potential markets worldwide. A coalition of New Economy actors (IPPR, Economic Change Unit, New Economics Foundation and NEON) also sought our support in creating a strategy for catalysing greater philanthropic investment in the UK’s new economy sector - we presented part of our research at the Friends Provident Foundation’s conference (they funded the work, alongside Hewlett Foundation).
Our Book Club on Rhodri Davies’ book ‘What Is Philanthropy For?’
Most of our client work relies on being able to bring groups of people together to imagine, design, create and reflect. Our team are unparalleled facilitators, and our workshops are renowned for being inspiring and invigorating. We work with our clients to design learning journeys and retreats, and facilitate away days and events, usually with participatory, peer-learning, or strategy-development goals. In 2023, we facilitated a funder roundtable with Aidsfonds to support peer learning amongst SRHR and feminist funders, and facilitated a workshop series for Walcot Foundation grantees to support them to collaborate with one another. We also facilitated a Strategy Retreat for Freedom Fund’s SMT, helping them to review their progress against their previous strategy, and explore their unique role in the movement to end modern slavery after a decade of operations - we’re lucky enough to be leading a full strategy process for them in 2024 too!
One of two LocalMotion Learning Summits from 2023
We continued to be the Learning Partner for LocalMotion (a 10-year systems change project which is a collaboration between City Bridge Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Lankelly Chase Foundation, Lloyds Bank Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Tudor Trust and six local communities across the UK) which involved facilitating two Learning Summits for 50+ people, including everyone from the CEOs and board members of major UK foundations, through to community group leaders and local councillors from across the UK. You can read our Learning Reports for this movement here, but our summits involved everything from dancing and drawing, through to strategy design and evaluation! We were also one of the founding delivery partners for LSE’s new 100x Impact Accelerator, which seeks to create ‘impact unicorns’ - the first cohort had some incredible ventures, and you can read or watch their Summit Day to find out more. We facilitated one strand of their 12-week programme, which included coaching, workshops and peer learning.
For some of our philanthropy clients, we act as grants managers for their giving portfolios, usually in collaboration with their DAF provider, wealth managers or banks. The majority of our philanthropy clients choose to remain anonymous, so can only share that this year most of our grants management support was for a large corporate foundation and with clients of Castlefield, The Charity Service, and Prism The Gift Fund - in 2023 we managed foundation funds of over £10m and directly supported our donor clients to grant more than £1m to 40 nonprofits across 23 countries. We also supported 12 wealth holders to start or re-strategise giving through philanthropy advice, coaching, workshops and research.
As well as beginning our clients’ impact journeys through strategy, we also support them during and after through impact measurement and evaluations. In 2023 we provided a mid-partnership evaluation of DLA Piper’s partnership with UNHCR, finished an evaluation of Shannon Trust’s community-based Turning Pages programme (supporting the literacy of previously incarcerated people), and created an evaluation framework for Fora: Network for Change. We also did whole-sector evaluations of the professionalism and sustainability of the animal welfare sectors in South Africa, Greece and the UK, in partnership with Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.
Oftentimes, the quality of communication can be the defining factor in whether impact work is successful and sustainable, or not. We provide high-level communications and messaging support to our clients, usually with a focus on Theory of Change and Case for Support structures. In 2023, we supported Global Fund for Women to create a communications campaign strategy for their new Movement-Led Approach and strategy. We also worked with Stronger Foundations for Nutrition to address the ways sector-wide communications about malnutrition were struggling to much-needed raise awareness, understanding and funding, and advise on key messages and investment cases that could move the needle on this vital issue. Part of our work with New Perimeter also included helping them to refine how they communicated their complex work in more simple and compelling ways, to ensure a wider audience understood the importance of justice work in development contexts.
When we’re serving clients across the nonprofit, philanthropy and business sectors, we often see the same challenges and problems come up, which is why we also have a Sector Transformation practice. Through this we develop and incubate new ideas and initiatives to transform the global impact sector for the better. In 2023, we developed a sector-changing resource in partnership with Freedom Fund called Funding Frontline Impact, with the goal of enabling other funders to emulate Freedom Fund’s model in other fields and get more funding going to the grassroots. We also partnered with Battersea Dogs & Cats’ Home’s Global Programmes team to co-create a new Self-Assessment Tool and Trend Analysis Model for organisations working in the companion animal welfare sectors, with the goal of ensuring greater professionalism and sustainability worldwide.
For several years, we’ve been incubating The Mesa programme, a community platform for philanthropists, with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2023 we worked with Women Moving Millions, Generation Pledge, Florida Philanthropy Network, Hispanics in Philanthropy, Beacon Collaborative, and Maverick Collective, and our star community was the one hosted by the National Centre for Family Philanthropy (NCFP) which reached record numbers of users.
Our kick off for our #FixTheFlow Fellowship
We also saw a 440% increase in applications for our flagship programme, the #FixTheFlow Fellowship, which brings together fundraisers and funders for a 12-month blended learning and systems change programme designed to reform the funding system by up-skilling, empowering and connecting the ‘resource activists’ who are responsible for getting funding where it is most needed.
PEAK Grantmaking Conference
We also got out and about in the sector! We published six amazing What Donors Want podcast episodes, with guests such as Vu Le (NonprofitAF), and Nick Grono (Freedom Fund), and appeared on Fundraising Everywhere’s Podcast speaking about Feminist Leadership, and The Good Egg’s podcast speaking about influencer marketing and social good.
We spoke at Institutional Investor’s European Multi-Family Office Symposium on UHNWI philanthropy, PEAK Grantmaking’s Annual Conference about what US foundations can learn from non-US grantmaking, Newspeak House about MEL for social good, Fat Beehive’s Buzz Talks on digitalising relationship based fundraising, Marmalade in Oxford during the Skoll World Forum on how we can embed learning in our organisations, Friends Provident Conference on funding for the New Economy Movement in the UK, the Association of Dogs and Cats Homes Conference on whether the animal welfare sector is sustainable, and the Royal Academy of Music on whether Arts Philanthropy needs a reset. We also hosted our own Book Club in London on Rhodri Davies’ excellent book ‘What Is Philanthropy For?’, and a Philanthropy Pub Quiz in Seattle. And, we featured on Coutt’s International Women’s Day B Corp billboard on The Strand in London.
Coutt’s Women-Led B Corps Billboard on The Strand
Phew! I think that’s it. What a year.
As I said, no two years (or days!) at I.G. are the same, so this is just a snapshot, if you’d like to know more about what we do, you can see our 10 Years of Impact and Growth report.
If any of this sounds like a good fit for your needs, or you’d like to discuss making 2024 the year we try something new with you, get in touch!
