Follow-On Funding
Scaling and sustaining systemic change work to disrupt the status quo is hard! Follow-on Funding is designed to help Echoing Green Alumni social innovators bridge the gap between their pilot stage and their scaling stage by providing unrestricted grant funding to help validate their models and build the foundation needed to expand their impact.
Echoing Green's Coordinated Capital Strategy
Echoing Green seeks to provide a coordinated continuum of capital to social innovators acknowledging that many forms of capital are needed by social innovators as they seek to scale their impact and create systemic change. Echoing Green provides seed funding through its Fellowship program, funding to validate impact and prepare for scale through its Follow-on Funding program, and funding to accelerate growth and reach breakthrough success through the Signal Fund.
Sustaining & Growing Equity Centered Work and Systemic Change
Follow-on Funding is designed to support Fellow-led organizations’ work that has an explicit and intentional focus on dismantling unjust systems and creating a future where communities around the world have an equitable opportunity to thrive.
While work from around the world that is both equity centered and focused on systemic change is eligible for funding, we have specific pools of funding dedicated to supporting work that supports black economic mobility in the United States. To Echoing Green, black economic mobility is about more than just economic success, it's also about power and autonomy and can include work that focuses on worker power, food and housing insecurity, education and criminal justice.
Catalytic Funding — $25,000
Funds to support testing new and unproven ideas, models, or methods via an initiative, project, or operational investment that will help organizations increase impact or move toward sustainability.
Past successful Catalytic Grant applications have focused on:
- Leveraging existing learnings to test new and unproven ideas or models that can help an organization reach new populations or operate more efficiently and effectively.
- Running an external evaluation.
- Conducting a feasibility study exploring expansion.
Successful applications will:
- Articulate a long-term vision to create a world free from systemic oppression.
- Present a logical short-term plan that moves your organization toward its long-term vision.
- Demonstrate how the proposed project tests new and unproven ideas distinct from your core operating model.
- Present both a clear learning agenda for the proposed project and a clear definition of success that aligns with your growth plans.
Transformational Funding — $100,000
Funds designed to take equity-centered impact to the next level of scale.
Echoing Green is providing larger capital amounts to Fellows seeking to expand existing program models to achieve equity outcomes at a greater scale.
Some examples of how successful applicants have sought to utilize transformational funding include:
- Expanding a successful model to different cities and growing a program to reach more community members.
- Identifying additional needs of the communities they serve or additional opportunities to strengthen the racial equity focus of their work.
- Identifying opportunities and strategic initiatives to expand impact to new levels of systemic change, which may require new talent to execute.
Successful applications will:
- Demonstrate traction and evidence that the solution is delivering the intended results.
- Articulate a long-term vision to create a world free from systemic oppression.
- Present a logical short term plan that moves your organization toward its long term vision.
- Show how this investment will have a transformational impact on the organization. Echoing Green defines Transformational Impact as the ability to create fundamental changes to what an organization does, how an organization operates, or where an organization works that, if successful, enable it to sustainably deliver either new levels of impact, or impact at new levels of scale.
Application Timeline
For Follow-on Funding Cycle 8 applications will be accepted from January 14 – February 4.
January 14 – February 4
Application Consideration Period
Echoing Green will accept applications through the Follow-on funding application portal.
February - March
Applications Reviewed
Echoing Green’s team and Fellow reviewers will review applications.
Late May
Recipients Notified
Fellows selected for grants will be notified and asked to provide bank account information to receive funds.
June
Grants Disbursed
Fellows awarded grants will receive funding.
Grant Disbursement Process & Eligibility
Who is eligible to receive Follow-on Funding from Echoing Green?
Catalytic and Transformational Funding are available for Fellows currently employed in (1) a leadership position at their Echoing Green-funded organization (no longer receiving Fellowship stipends from Echoing Green), or (2) a new social impact organization that they have founded.
I'm an Echoing Green Fellow. Am I eligible to apply?
This funding application is currently open to Fellows from the classes of 2022 and earlier. Applicants do not need to be with their Echoing Green-funded organization but must hold a founding role at their current social impact organization.
I've received Follow-on Funding previously. Am I eligible to apply?
Previous Follow-on Funding recipients are encouraged to apply; however, your past award history may be taken into consideration in the evaluation process with preference given to fellows who have not yet received follow-on funding in the event of a tie.
Who reviews the Follow-on Funding applications?
- All applications for Follow-on Funding are reviewed internally by a team of Echoing Green staff members. Applications for Transformational funding are additionally reviewed by a group of Echoing Green alumni Fellows.
- Applications are reviewed against other applications requesting the same funding type. For example, applications requesting Catalytic funding are reviewed with other applications requesting Catalytic funding.
Who should I contact for questions about follow-on funding?
Fellows should email fellowsupport@echoinggreen.org with any questions about Echoing Green’s Follow-on Funding program.
Financial Considerations
Why do I need an organizational bank account or fiscal sponsor to apply for a grant?
For accounting and auditing purposes, Echoing Green requires that grants be disbursed to organizational bank accounts or fiscal sponsors, not personal bank accounts.
What do Fellows running for-profit organizations need to consider?
These payments will be structured as grants. For Fellows running for-profit organizations, please make sure to familiarize yourself with the tax implications associated with your organization receiving a charitable grant by checking with your lawyer or accountant.
What will Fellows using a fiscal sponsor need to provide to receive funds?
Echoing Green will request documentation of the relationship with the fiscal sponsor for accounting and auditing purposes. In addition to the fiscal sponsor’s bank account information, please be prepared to provide your organization’s agreement or MOU with your fiscal sponsor, as well as the W-9 tax form of your fiscal sponsor.
Grant Obligations
Will Fellows need to report on how they use their grants?
Grant recipients should expect to hear from our team about impact reporting following the grant disbursement period. This will help inform the Follow-on Funding work moving forward as well as provide content and stories for our continued thought leadership and fundraising efforts.
Funders of Follow-on Funding
Who are the funders of follow-on funding grants?
- Allstate
- Bank of America
- Barclays
- BlackRock
- Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
- Citi Foundation
- Comcast NBCUniversalCorporation
- General Atlantic
- Godley Family Foundation
- Jerome L. Greene Foundation
- John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- KKRLinde
- MacKenzie Scott
- MetLife
- Moody’s
- Reed Hastings
- Salesforce
- The Skoll Foundation
- Tiger Global Impact Ventures
- T. Rowe Price
- Walmart Foundation
- World Education Services
