For Foundations · Funding partners
Request access to the funding brief.
This page details how The CIVIL Executive Series™ works for foundations and what investing in your grantees makes possible. Tell Civil who you are, and the team will review your request and grant access.
The CIVIL Framework™.
Civil’s methodology for institutional analysis and design is organized around eight institutional functions and applied through five disciplines. The Series puts the same framework Civil uses in its consulting practice to work inside a cohort.
Clarify
Establishes current-state conditions.
See the system as it is, with purpose, position, and intended impact defined precisely.
Integrate
Maps how functions relate.
Connect the pieces and make the interdependencies between functions explicit.
Validate
Tests structures against values.
Close the distance between what an institution promises and what actually carries it.
Implement
Translates analysis into decisions.
Turn design into practice, where declaration meets actual conditions.
Learn
Builds capacity to sustain.
The stabilizing discipline at the center, through which institutional judgment develops.
Operating Foundation and Structure
- Maps internal structure and decision-making, including where informal systems create avoidable cost.
- Supports practical changes that improve consistency and execution.
Program Architecture and Resource Discipline
- Examines how programs are designed, sequenced, and resourced.
- Builds habits that keep program design and resource allocation in active alignment.
Relational Communications and Institutional Voice
- Examines communication across leadership, staff, and external relationships.
- Builds practices grounded in how the organization actually operates, distinct from message strategy.
Civil carries the work. Leaders participate.
Each 12-week intensive is organized in three modules. Civil carries the analytical and facilitation work throughout; grantee leaders participate, they do not manage, prepare, or coordinate the program.
Weeks 1 to 4*
The CIVIL Dashboard™
- Administers The CIVIL Dashboard™ with each organization, a scoped pre-intensive diagnostic.
- Surfaces current-state conditions, decision-making patterns, resource alignment, and priorities specific to the intensive’s function.
- One interview per leader, about 45 to 60 minutes.
- Reviews Dashboard findings before the in-person intensive, with nothing to prepare independently.
In Person
Executive Intensive
- Designs and facilitates a two-day working session for all four organizations at the midpoint.
- Guides teams through The CIVIL Framework™ disciplines toward a 90-day activation plan on the intensive’s theme.
- Senior leaders attend the two-day working session.
- No prep beyond reviewing Dashboard findings, and teams leave with a completed activation plan.
Weeks 7 to 12*
Implementation Support
- Executive coaching and implementation guidance on the 90-day plan, plus a team activation session.
- Check-ins at the 60-day and 90-day marks complete the support arc.
- Leaders implement the first six weeks with Civil coaching.
- Every intensive includes a 60-day and 90-day check-in.
*Week ranges are approximate and adjust slightly by cohort and intensive.
An advisory engagement, not a grant.
This investment is most naturally aligned with operational effectiveness or institutional development portfolios. A foundation selects which grantees participate and at what level, and its funding covers the full cost of delivery: The CIVIL Dashboard™, facilitation, and implementation support, fully underwriting participation for the organizations it funds.
Each analysis is practitioner-led and specific to the organization, never templated or AI-generated. Where technology assists with information processing, the diagnostic judgment, facilitation, and recommendations remain the work of Civil practitioners.
Throughout the series, Civil provides the foundation periodic briefings on cohort-level themes and structural conditions, a grounded view of what its grantees are navigating, without disclosing findings specific to any individual organization.
Single Intensive
One nonprofit through one 12-week intensive targeting a specific institutional function, with full 90-day activation support. For foundations that have identified a specific operational gap in one or more grantees.
Full Series
One nonprofit through all three intensives across 36 weeks. For foundations whose grantees face strain that crosses more than one function.
Ecosystem Cohort
Four ecosystem-aligned nonprofits in one shared cohort, building shared operational language and peer relationships across a foundation’s portfolio. For foundations working toward field-level coherence, not just individual grantee improvement.
An investment in your grantees.
Investments are structured as advisory engagements and are best aligned with a foundation’s organizational effectiveness or institutional development portfolio. Detailed investment levels, by scope and number of intensives, are shared in the full sponsorship brief.
Investment levels are in the full brief.
Request the funding brief for the full investment matrix by scope and intensive count. Civil reviews each request and sends the brief directly, or talk with Dennis about the right fit for your portfolio.
Foundations receive confirmation of participation and an executive summary of structural priorities addressed, including cohort-level insights. Ecosystem Cohort Sponsorship reflects a single program delivery across a cohort of four nonprofits and twelve seats, not four separate institutional contracts.
Series I is the first of the full Framework.
The CIVIL Framework™ spans eight institutional functions. Series I addresses the three where strain shows up most often, operations, programs, and communications. Future series will extend the same cohort model across the remaining functions, until the full Framework is covered. A foundation that sponsors Series I is helping establish a program that will eventually address institutional health in its entirety.