Philanthropic advising services
Seven Cranes Consulting helps individuals, families, foundations, and donor collaboratives translate their values and ambitions into thoughtful philanthropic investments. We combine rigorous research and diligence with an understanding that meaningful change takes many forms and cannot always be reduced to quantifiable metrics.
our SERVICES
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We help individuals and families articulate their philanthropic intentions and translate them into an actionable giving strategy, and manage the work required to put it into practice. Depending on your needs, we can establish priorities and giving principles, manage relationships and communications with grantees, coordinate proposals and reporting, track grants and commitments, and serve as a liaison among nonprofit partners and your other professional advisors. We can also coordinate with your legal, tax, wealth management, and banking teams to help ensure that philanthropic decisions move efficiently from intention to execution.
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We conduct tailored research into causes, communities, geographies, and fields to help donors understand the landscape, including key issues and trends, approaches and interventions, leading organizations and experts, existing funders, funding gaps, and emerging opportunities.
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We identify organizations, initiatives, collaborations, and other philanthropic opportunities aligned with a donor's interests and objectives, including opportunities donors may not otherwise encounter.
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We evaluate prospective organizations and investments across leadership, governance, financial health, strategy, theory of change, organizational capacity, evidence and results, community credibility, funding need, risk, potential unintended consequences, and alignment with donor objectives. For ambitious investments, diligence also considers vision, ambition, potential for scale or broader influence, what additional capital could make possible, and the organization's ability and willingness to learn from evaluation, understand its impact, and adapt.
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We develop right-sized frameworks for understanding progress and impact, combining quantitative and qualitative evidence appropriate to the work. We revisit the original investment thesis over time: What did we expect to happen? What happened? What did we learn? What should change as a result?
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We help donors evaluate and structure significant philanthropic investments requiring deeper strategic and organizational diligence. This can include assessing the strength and ambition of the opportunity, organizational readiness, leadership, financial requirements, risks and assumptions, potential for scale or broader influence, milestones, learning and evaluation plans, and what becomes possible because of the proposed investment.
our approach
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Our approach begins with the donor. We work to understand your values, interests, ambitions, and vision for your philanthropy, then translate that intention into a disciplined process for making thoughtful investments.
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We conduct rigorous research to understand the field, its leading thinking and approaches, the evidence available, key experts and organizations, existing funding, and opportunities where philanthropic capital may make a meaningful difference.
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From there, we identify potential investments and conduct diligence appropriate to the size, complexity, and risk of the opportunity - examining not only an organization's financial health and past results, but its leadership, vision, ambition, strategy, organizational capacity, ability to execute, and willingness to learn and adapt.
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Our approach begins with the donor. We work to understand your values, interests, ambitions, and vision for your philanthropy, then translate that intention into a disciplined process for making thoughtful investments.
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After an investment is made, we help establish meaningful ways to assess progress, learn from results, and apply those lessons to future giving.
our PRINCIPLES
Donor-led, not donor-unquestioned.
Your philanthropic priorities begin with your values, interests, and ambitions. Our role is not to determine what you should care about. We provide the research, context, alternatives, and tradeoffs you need to make informed decisions about how to pursue the change you want to create.
Rigorous, not reductive.
We believe thoughtful philanthropy requires a disciplined analysis and a clear understanding of what impact looks like. We consider quantitative and qualitative results, organizational performance, stakeholder experience, learning, and other indicators appropriate to the opportunity rather than applying the same measurement framework across all organizations and sectors. Our goal is to understand what is known, what remains uncertain, and what evidence would meaningfully inform a decision.
Your priorities lead, our discipline follows.
Whether a donor is interested in medical research, education, arts and culture, LGBTQ+ rights, direct services, or climate, we bring the same disciplined approach to understanding the opportunity. We examine the landscape, the strength of the strategy, the organizations involved, the risks and assumptions, the role philanthropy can play, and what additional capital could make possible while keeping the donor's values, interests, and ambitions at the center of the recommendation.
We value expertise in many forms.
Our research draws on academic and field research, practitioners, philanthropic leaders, subject-matter experts, and experts whose knowledge is informed by lived experience. We seek perspectives that help us understand not only what the evidence says, but also the context, complexity, and realities of the work.
Investment-minded, without importing the limitations of finance.
We apply useful investment disciplines - including diligence, portfolio thinking, risk assessment, additionality, and investment theses - while recognizing that philanthropy can accomplish things markets cannot. It can support experimentation, public goods, cultural institutions, advocacy, movements, institution-building, and transformational ideas whose ultimate impact may take years to understand.