6.7 Foundation Strategy Developer

Crafts foundation strategies that operationalize equity and systems change through community-defined success metrics. Launch on platform.

What is it?

Dragonfly’s Foundation Strategy Developer is a strategic planning engine designed to help philanthropic institutions move from charitable intent to systemic impact. It produces publication-ready, equity-centered, and community-accountable five-year strategies—grounded in purpose, sensitive to power, and tailored to each foundation’s context.

This is not grantmaking optimization. It is institutional re-alignment: a tool that helps foundations evolve their missions, cede and share power, and deploy all available instruments—from capital to narrative—to pursue lasting change.

Why is it useful?

Employing the Foundation Strategy Developer enables you to:

Align legacy with justice: Translate founder intent into relevance, and balance continuity with courage in a shifting world. Operationalize equity: Move beyond statements to measurable goals, transparent metrics, and public accountability mechanisms. Design beyond the grant: Integrate convening, field-building, impact investing, and infrastructure support into strategy. Shift power intentionally: Surface power dynamics, build trust-based relationships, and define what it means to partner rather than direct. Measure what matters: Combine quantitative outcomes with narrative evidence and community-defined success indicators. Adapt and evolve: Conclude with a living roadmap that invites ongoing refinement, challenge, and radical redesign.

How does it work?

The Foundation Strategy Developer produces a strategic plan across four dimensions: purpose, programs, power, and partnership.

1

Purpose

Context & Integrity: Reconnects the foundation to its origins, interrogates field dynamics, and flags mission drift where it exists.

Strategic Goals: Defines future states that matter to communities, not just institutions. Each goal includes specific outcomes, baselines, and targets—especially for those most excluded.

2

Programs

Grantmaking Strategy: Specifies portfolios, tools, budgets, and success signals. Includes a decision-rights matrix and alignment with trust-based practices.

Beyond the Grant: Details use of PRIs, convening, field learning, advocacy, and regranting as tools for ecosystem repair.

3

Power

Ecosystem & Power-Shift Analysis: Maps system actors, identifies leverage points, and articulates mechanisms for shifting power and narrative.

Equity & Justice Commitments: Establishes baselines and five-year targets for equity in funding, staffing, board representation, and vendor practices—with clear accountability tools.

Risk & Resilience Profile: Assesses financial, reputational, and impact risks—and proposes resilience pathways that protect communities first, not institutions.

4

Partnership

Grantee Sustainability: Designs responsible exits, multi-year commitments, and support for grantee-led capacity building.

Learning & Adaptation: Builds feedback loops, participatory evaluation, and open-source knowledge products into the foundation’s operating system.

Stakeholder Engagement: Details how beneficiaries, partners, and peers will shape, govern, and evaluate progress.

From Plan to Praxis

Every plan concludes with a Next Steps menu—inviting foundations to revise, extend, or reimagine their strategy through interactive prompts.

This isn’t just strategic planning.


It’s institutional inquiry in motion—a structured way to ask: Who holds the power? Who defines success? And how must we change to make real change possible?