What does I.G. Advisors actually do? - 2024 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 2024 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 (you can see our 2023 edition here).
The location of the clients we have served in 2024.
Our core service offering at I.G. is strategy and management consultancy, to which we bring 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 2024, we completed a 12 month strategy development process with Freedom Fund, a pooled fund that works to end modern slavery. This project enabled us to engage with survivors, grantees, programme teams, leadership and experts from across the landscape in which they are working, and culminated in a 5-year strategic plan and new theory of change for this sector-leading fund on its 10th anniversary and following a large investment from Mackenzie Scott. We also led a strategic planning process with Responsible Business Initiative for Justice, an award-winning international nonprofit that works with companies to push forward criminal justice reform initiatives, helping the brilliant team to plan the next chapter of their growing impact.
The retreat in Cambridge we facilitated for Freedom Fund coincided with the only 90 seconds of sun the UK got all year.
We’ve also seen an increase in Foundations identifying Big Bet focus areas for their strategies, as we all grapple with the global polycrisis. We were chosen to lead the strategy development process for three major ‘bets’ in 2024, one of which is public (Resilio Fund - a pooled fund working to transform the way the world responds to humanitarian crises, founded by Legatum), and two of which are confidential but focus on using film and the entertainment industry to push forward gender equality and muslim representation (watch this space!). Our strategy projects with the Gates Foundation were largely confidential, but our work with their Philanthropy and Partnerships Team specifically focussed on strategies to develop greater giving, and you can listen to our What Donors Want interview with Ideas42 to hear more about what we learned through this process.
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 2024 involved continuing to support fashion company Kurt Geiger with their Kurt Geiger Kindness Foundation (which we helped to design and launch in 2022), and advising The Bicester Collection (who run luxury retail villages like Bicester Village around the world) to continue to develop their DO GOOD charity initiatives and their Unlock Her Future Prize, which supports women social entrepreneurs with start-up funding.
Some of our #FixTheFlow Fellows recounting their experiences on the programme
Doing any kind of social impact work is really tough without independent support, training and guidance. We’re big advocates of leadership, team and executive development, and we have years of experience training and coaching everyone from early-career fundraisers and programme workers through to senior executives in big NGOs or Foundations. In 2024, we launched our Leadership Lab which brought together two cohorts of leaders from around the world for our trailblazing 6 week programme for purpose-driven professionals who want to level up their leadership.
Of course, we continued to provide fundraising, grantmaking and leadership training to two cohorts of our #FixTheFlow Fellowship Fellows (applications for the next cohort open now!). We also continued to be the delivery partner for LSE’s 100x Impact Accelerator, which seeks to create ‘impact unicorns’ - we lead the core 12-week programme, which includes Scaling Up, Leadership and Fundraising Strategy, alongside coaching, workshops and peer learning (see the summary video of kick off week for a sneak peek of one of our dance energisers!). Alongside this, we led the Social Media training sessions for participants in The Big Give’s Women and Girls and Christmas Challenge Match Fund Campaigns, and continued to coach amazing staff and leaders from Ashiana Network and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Cohort 3 of the 100x Impact Accelerator
We have seen a huge increase in funders investing in learning and knowledge exchange amongst their grantees and peers, as well as a prioritisation of more collaborative ways of defining and capturing impact. In that vein, 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, and six local communities across the UK). The initiative has spent 2022-2024 building collaboration in communities, strengthening relationships between Places and Funders, learning, and listening deeply to community needs and priorities. We were the learning partner for 3 years, and you can read our final Learning Report from our developmental evaluation of the initiative here.
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. We played a key role in facilitating collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst grantees for funders such as Aidsfonds’ Love Alliance Programme, Walcot Foundation’s Bounceback Programme and The London Community Foundation’s VAWG Grassroots Fund (this project is still ongoing), and designed and facilitated away days, workshops and retreats for RBIJ’s leadership team, and Freedom Fund’s board, and separately a convening of Freedom Fund’s global teams.
One of our Learning Summits for LocalMotion
As well as beginning our clients’ impact journeys through strategy, we also support them during and after through impact measurement and evaluations. In 2024, we worked with C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Inc to conduct a thorough evaluation of their Inclusive Climate Action Forum and Fund.
Our roots are in the nonprofit world, and in 2024 we developed fundraising strategies and provided in-depth fundraising and business development coaching, training and research support for the brilliant teams at The Union (global), Hogan’s Alley Society (Vancouver), MSI Reproductive Choices (global), Womankind Worldwide (global), Trussell (UK), OPM (global), UK4U for UNHCR (global) and FRIDA (global). This work supported an increase in funding to issues as diverse as lung health, housing justice, reproductive rights, gender justice, hunger, refugee rights and education.
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 2024 we managed foundation funds of over £15m and directly supported our donor clients to grant more than £1.5m to 36 nonprofits across 21 countries.
A strategy away day, with a totally reasonable number of post-it notes.
We also supported 9 wealth holders to start or re-strategise giving through philanthropy advice, coaching, workshops and research, one example of which is a family foundation for whom we helped to establish a UK focussed Third Sector Infrastructure programme to move the sector towards a more sustainable and long-term footing. After taking over the Enriched programme from Beacon Collaborative, we hosted two major online philanthropy networks - Enriched is UK focussed (and if you’re a philanthropist you can apply to join here), and NCFP’s Peer Exchange Platform which brought together USA family philanthropists.
We were also extremely prolific in our writing, recording and speaking in 2024. We published six amazing What Donors Want podcast episodes, with guests such as Piyush Tantia (Ideas42), Farah Mohamed (on leadership), and Rhodri Davies (Why Philanthropy Matters). And, because you know we love a podcast, we also launched two new podcast series: First was Leadership Lab Notes, exploring everything from managing Gen Z and managing leadership transitions through to feminist and non-hierarchical leadership. And next was Fixing the Philanthropic Flow, a series where we bring you the voices of grant-making and fundraising activists who inspire us. Our team also featured on the Halo and Pollen podcasts about leadership & working in social impact, and the Deconstructing Development Podcast about Influencer Giving.
We published thought leadership on everything from MEL for social enterprises, leveraging limited funds for humanitarian work, leadership mistakes, social innovation, the future of philanthropy, the professional development it needs to get there, and what philanthropy can learn from football.
We also got out and about in the sector. A lot! We hosted and spoke at so many events, I am 99% sure I have missed some here: We hosted the opening event for Marmalade Festival alongside Skoll World Forum in Oxford, sponsored the India Philanthropy Forum and spoke on a panel about the tensions between depth and scale in philanthropy, hosted our inaugural ‘Clean Money’ event at Edinburgh Book Festival exploring tainted philanthropy, hosted an event on what it takes to be a leader of systems change with Kerry Dyer Shillito, Nick Grono, and Maha Jweied, hosted an international book club on Amy Schiller’s ‘Price of Humanity’, joined a Deconstructing Development panel event about Influencer Philanthropy, spoke on a panel at the Humanitarian Xchange on leveraging limited funds for humanitarians, led a world cafe event on learning and evaluation for London Funders’ Festival of Learning, spoke at the Lloyd’s CSR Network about what makes a corporate impact strategy truly impactful, contributed to the Philanthropy Australia study tour, hosted a virtual event in partnership with Dasra for next generation philanthropists, facilitated a lunch and learn on philanthropy for the Dogs Trust Philanthropy Team, spoke to students at SOAS about careers in the impact sector, gave a Leadership Talk for the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, joined a panel for Pollen Careers,
Our Clean Money event at Edinburgh Book Festival.
Phew! I think that’s it. What a year. I continue to be so proud to lead this amazing team of people.
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!
We’re just insufferably cute, aren’t we.