Donor Support Services
We help philanthropists become trusted, impactful partners.
If you’ve ever been involved in traditional philanthropy, you’ve likely encountered some puzzling practices. Do any of these sound familiar? Rigid timelines, overly linear development approaches, decision-makers far removed from the issue or community they are trying to support, complex and time-consuming grant applications, and insufficient funding. Much of it has never made sense to us, and in fact it often seemed designed to discourage innovation and incentivize tired, short-term solutions and busy work. So, for the past fifteen years, we’ve been experimenting to create a nonprofit funding model that is informed by experts closest to the issues in order to achieve the biggest impact.
How are we different?
- We collaborate with domain experts to guide our community selection and choose organizations that best serve their communities.
- We focus on listening and supporting nonprofits to build their infrastructure from the inside out.
- By investing in organizations over the long term, we build flexibility for learning and innovation. Failure is not a dirty word!
- We partner with brilliant nonprofits, minimize obstacles, and provide organizations with the tools to fly.
- We adapt and iterate on our model over time.
How do we know it works?
We measure our success as funders by how well we support nonprofit needs and their ability to achieve impact in their communities. Our funding focuses on building capacity over five years to help bring nonprofits to the next level. This means funding staff, system improvements, training, and everything in between.
83% of our nonprofit partners indicate that Magic Cabinet grants have allowed them to do things they would not have otherwise been able to do.
88% of the organizations we support have increased their capacity in the first two and a half years of our partnership.
75% of Magic Cabinet grantee nonprofits have already improved their ability to achieve their mission by the grant period halfway point.
Feeling inspired? Let’s collaborate and innovate together.
Learning from and with one another is how we accelerate positive changes in philanthropy. Whether you want to connect with like-minded practitioners who are changing the way they work, have a unique need or idea, or would like support in changing your grantmaking practice, we’d love to hear from you. Click the link below or contact our Partnerships Team at partnerships@magiccabinet.org.
As we continue to adapt our model to be more inclusive and responsive, we recognize the need to incorporate Indigenous values into our grantmaking. Through our Native Partnerships work, we'll expand our grantmaking into Native communities in collaboration with Native-led intermediaries.
Explore how Yield Giving's recent grants to our partners reflect a shift in philanthropy and the value of flexible funding, community-driven decisions, and long-term support for nonprofit
In this piece, Magic Cabinet CEO Christina Engel shares how philanthropy can shift away from hierarchal giving models toward more innovative and responsive funding grounded in community insights and priorities.