April 15, 2025
Building on the High Road Training Fund, JFF sharpened its insight into community based organizations’ needs and developed a toolkit to strengthen organizational sustainability.
Follow these steps to make the most of it:
Tip: Bookmark this page so you can return whenever you need guidance.
Organizational sustainability is the leading challenge faced by many organizations. With fluctuating government funding due to budget constraints and shifting priorities, there is a need for practical ready-to-use resources to support an organization’s sustainability.
The sustainability toolkit includes guides, templates, best practices, and case studies that support organizations across four lifecycle phases:
 |  |  |  |
Securing Funds
| Managing Funds
| Braiding Funds
| Communicating Impact
|
Funder cultivation and exploring new funding opportunities | Effectively managing the spend down of grants | Optimizing the use of multiple funding sources | Capturing and communicating impact of organizations’ programs |
| | Securing Funds | ||
This section of the toolkit offers guidance and resources to assist organizations in diversifying their funding sources. It covers topics such as securing private philanthropic funding, aligning your organization with funders’ priorities, engaging with your local workforce development board, and setting up a fee-for-service model. Nonprofits, community-based organizations, and other service providers seeking practical resources and templates to help secure additional funding to strengthen their organizational capacity and resilience will benefit from this resource. | |||
How to Identify Philanthropic
Funding Sources
 | This resource offers guidance and tools for prospect research to identify private philanthropic funding sources aligned with your mission and fundraising goals. |
Making the Case That Your HRTP Is Aligned With a Funder’s Priorities
 | This tool explains how to effectively make your case to funders, whether they explicitly focus on workforce development or have other priorities. |
 | This tool offers guidance for nonprofit workforce organizations on how to collaborate more effectively with local workforce development boards. |
Strategic Funder Communications
and Outreach
 | This resource offers a guide for nonprofits on strategic communication and outreach with new funders. |
Securing Unrestricted Funds Through a Fee-for-Service Model
 | This resource shows how nonprofits can use a fee-for-service model to secure unrestricted funds and reduce reliance on restricted public and philanthropic funding. |
| Managing Funds | ||
Effective financial management is critical to sustaining an organization’s work and ensuring compliance with grant requirements. This section helps organizations assess their capacity and skills for managing funds, guiding decisions on whether to handle financial management internally or outsource. It also provides strategies for effectively managing grant spend-down, ensuring public funds are allocated and utilized within the required time frame and in alignment with grant agreements. By understanding these key aspects, organizations can strengthen financial oversight, support long-term sustainability, and maximize their impact. | |||
Capacity and Skills Needed to Manage Funds
 | This tool offers guidance on how to evaluate the capacity and skills needed for effective financial management of grants. |
Effectively Managing Public Grant Spend-Down
 | This resource shares strategies for spending down grants to ensure compliance, prevent fund retraction, maximize impact, and strengthen future funding opportunities. |
| Braiding Funds | ||
This section outlines the case for braiding funds, provides additional resources to support organizations interested in braiding funds, and features a case study of how a High Road Training Fund grantee leveraged multiple funding sources to scale its program. | |||
Braiding Funds Overview and Case Study
 | This resource explores braided funding as a strategy to sustain community organizations and includes a case study on how a nonprofit applied this approach. |
| Communicating Impact | ||
This section of the toolkit empowers organizations with essential tools and insights to unlock a deeper understanding of their impact through effective tracking, collection, and analysis of data. Beyond numbers, it also reveals powerful strategies for crafting compelling stories that bring the organization’s impact to life and tailoring that messaging to the specific interests of various audiences. | |||
Understanding Your Organization’s Impact
 | This resource provides guidance and tools to help deepen your organization’s understanding of your impact and how to effectively demonstrate it. |
 | This guide offers examples of practical approaches to tailoring your impact story to reflect the interests and priorities of a wide range of specific audiences. |
