LA Voice

Challenge

LA Voice is a multi-racial, multi-faith community organization that works to transform LA County into one that reflects the dignity of all people. Elevate first partnered with LA Voice in 2019 through a Writing Capacity Project to address a short-term need for grant writing capacity. Through this initial project, LA Voice quickly came to see the value of Elevate’s professional and holistic grant writing process and elected to expand the partnership into Comprehensive Grant Writing Services. As LA Voice made strides in growing their efforts throughout Los Angeles County, Elevate met the organization’s needs for a more professionalized grants program and expanded capacity for grant writing and prospecting. In turn, this allowed LA Voice’s leadership team to focus on other goals, like expanding their programs and impact.

Response

LA Voice’s Elevate team conducted a formal three-month onboarding process which included gathering all existing grant deadlines from one individual staff member’s personal calendar and uploading these to our formal calendar tracking and deadline management system in Salesforce. Elevate’s Salesforce database produces a Weekly Grant Calendar Update that goes out to all members of the team, ensuring that everyone is on the same page about upcoming deadlines. Using these systems and data management tools that Elevate has refined for nearly a decade ensures that every member of the LA Voice team has updated and accessible information about their entire pipeline, when they need it.

Many of LA Voice’s grants are large and complex, so together, we created a structured process that includes standard drafting timelines and review sequences, plus attachment prep deadlines and processes. Elevate’s standardized processes and bi-weekly meetings also helped streamline the approval process for LA Voice’s dedicated leadership team – a busy group of strategic leaders with limited time and capacity for reading and editing grants.

Before working with Elevate, time constraints also prevented the LA Voice team from actively researching new funding opportunities. Now, the Elevate team provides ongoing prospect research and cultivation support, which continually increases the organization’s pipeline of new funding.

Impact

Working with Elevate has afforded LA Voice’s executive team the bandwidth they need to invest in the organization’s key priorities, including a merger with Long Beach Interfaith Community Organization (ICO) and an upgrade of their finance infrastructure. And with Elevate managing the grants process, the development team has found they now have the capacity to focus on other forms of fundraising, including individual donor relations and strategic communications.

Elevate’s work has increased the efficiency of LA Voice’s grants program, supporting the organization to raise over $3.6 million in 2021. Furthermore, our work to identify new funding sources contributed to a 10% increase in dollars raised in 2021.

About the Organization

LA Voice is a multi-racial, multi-faith community organization that awakens people to their own power, training them to speak, act, and work together to transform their county into one that reflects the dignity of all people. They believe all people have power and a voice and every day they amplify that power by uniting diverse faith voices to stand-up for what their communities need, winning changes that improve the lives of all Angelenos.

Service Details

advocacy, policy, and organizing

Founded

2005

Started with Elevate

2019

Location

Los Angeles, CA

Annual Budget

$2,444,550

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