If cost is the reason you have not asked, ask anyway.
We are a charity, not a consultancy, and our pricing is built to reflect that. Organizations that can pay the full program rate do. Organizations that cannot are carried by grants, sponsors, donors, and the fees of those that can. Here is exactly how it works, published, so you can see where you fall before you contact us.
Every offering has one board-approved standard program rate, published on the Programs page. We do not negotiate it case by case. Instead, there are four documented pathways below it.
The same ladder, as a table — including what funds the rest
| Pathway | Who it is for | You pay | The balance is funded by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard program rate | Organizations able to pay the full approved charge | 100% | Your program fee |
| Reduced rate | Moderate budget, or no allocation available for capacity building | 60–80% | Cross-subsidy and unrestricted support |
| Deep subsidy | Small organizations, under-resourced communities, limited unrestricted funds | 25–50% | Grants, donors, sponsors, cross-subsidy |
| Scholarship | Severe resource constraint; start-up or distressed charitable organization | 0–20% | Grants, donations, our scholarship fund |
| Sponsored cohort | A foundation, county, health system, or donor sponsors a group of organizations | Nothing | The sponsor |
On objective factors, applied consistently, not on how well you negotiate:
- 01Annual operating budget and unrestricted revenue
- 02Cash reserves and liquidity
- 03Geographic or population-based disadvantage
- 04The proportion of the people you serve who are from communities in need
- 05Start-up status, or recent loss of major funding
- 06Whether you have any funds specifically available for capacity building
- 07The urgency of the compliance, governance, fiscal, or program-quality risk you face
- 08The community impact the work would have
- 09Whether grant or sponsor funding is available for your organization or your cohort
One short form. It asks for your budget, your reserves, the community you serve, what you need, and why now. It should take fifteen minutes, and it is deliberately short because the organizations most likely to qualify are the ones with the least time to spend applying.
We respond within ten business days with a decision and a tier. If we cannot fund your request this cycle, we say so plainly and tell you when the next one opens.
This should take fifteen minutes. It is deliberately short, because the organizations most likely to qualify have the least time to spend applying.
Every year we publish what this policy actually produced: how many organizations we served and at what tier, the dollar value of subsidy and scholarship awarded, how many people we trained and for how many hours, what we published to the Open Shelf and how often it was used, and the capacity outcomes achieved. A policy nobody reports on is a marketing statement. This one has numbers attached.