FIRE | Spring Strategies

Our internationally acclaimed Financial Innovation and Resilience (FIRE) public program is a comprehensive, 4-month training that supports social change organizations to ignite greater financial strength.

FIRE teaches the fundamentals of financial resilience and equips teams with new tools and strategies to better respond to an increasingly volatile and rapidly changing political and funding landscape.

We also collaborate with funders, governments and corporations in service of civil society, seeking to deepen their understanding of what it takes for movements to be financially healthy. We deliver the FIRE program in English, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as in other languages through simultaneous interpretation.

You can see a list of organizations that have gone through FIRE on our partners page.

What to expect

You'll join a global cohort of social and climate justice changemakers to:

Build a customized action plan using new tools from Spring
Develop a budgeting strategy that projects and captures income, costs and full cost recovery
Anticipate and respond to changes in your funding and financing landscape
Monitor progress with a user-friendly dashboard of key financial health indicators that can be easily absorbed by your staff and board
Evaluate and pursue opportunities for income diversification
A creative, entrepreneurial communications approach to growing and strengthening your supporter base
Practice new prospecting techniques for nurturing transactional and transformational relationships with funders
Access an international community of peers to learn alongside

Is FIRE for you?

Would you like to:

bring the same energy and resilience you apply to your programs to your finances, too?
use a creative, entrepreneurial approach to grow your base of supporters?
gain new perspectives on money to inform your strategies?
employ user-friendly financial health indicators in decision-making?
shift your team culture so you can bring collective energy to your finances?

If the answer to any of the above questions is “Yes”, then FIRE is for you! Cohorts typically consist of executive directors, board members and senior staff who lead in the areas of finance, resource mobilization and strategic communications, as well as foundation staff providing financial support to these leaders.

We enthusiastically invite you to join FIRE as a team. We’ve consistently observed that organizations which sustain the most significant leaps in mission-driven fundraising and finances do it by working together from the start.

A group of people surrounded by the FIRE activity, concentrated and shared financial resilience practices

Why is Spring different?

A proven, global track record.

Since 2012, FIRE has supported leadership teams from 400 social and climate justice organizations in more than 60 countries.

The program is designed and delivered by facilitators with deep roots in social and climate justice movements, and infused with experiences from organizations dealing with shrinking civic space as well as those working under more favourable circumstances. FIRE offers a rare opportunity to gain both global and local insights that can be applied in different contexts and organizations. Learn more about our clients and impact.

A highly customized learning experience.

Your mission and goals will be at the centre of your learning.

We know firsthand the beauty and challenge of resource mobilization and relationship-building work, and our experts have experience navigating a variety of contextual, organizational and technical dynamics. Your facilitators will support you with new perspectives, strategies and tools to apply in your unique context. Learn more about our team and approach.

A vibrant peer-learning space and concrete tools.

We know how lonely it can be if the responsibility for fundraising or finance rests on you alone. We're here to change that.

In FIRE, you’ll find an open and supportive community of other passionate people leading social and climate justice organizations. Together, you’ll practice new strategies, apply new tools, share experiences and explore similar questions or challenges.

Why FIRE, why now?

The work you do is complex, and the need to adequately resource it is ever-present.

Intense crises unfolding in our climate, economies, political systems and societies need our urgent attention, the stakes are higher than ever. While many donors are shifting outdated and restrictive practices, transformative changes in the funding system can scale up crucial work social and climate justice leaders are doing. The opportunities for systemic change are all around us, but first, we need to change the way money moves through the world so that it flows in service of people and the planet.

FIRE gives you the tools to change the way money flows in your organization and to help shift the funding system by working together.

You’ll change the way your team works with the challenge of fundraising, how you nurture relationships with partners and supporters, and the possibilities you see for making financial strength an integral part of your mission. From shrinking civic space to volatility in funding landscapes to navigating the starvation cycle, FIRE teaches innovative and creative practices for disrupting systemic barriers to financial resilience so that you can sustain your critical work in the long term.

Our FIRE programs

Get hands-on practice with up to 36 other participants from around the world by joining one of our
public programs, or get in touch if you're looking for more tailored support for your team.

View Upcoming Events

Woman participating in the FIRE program happily holding a cup of coffee with a US dollar design as part of a dynamic

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FIRE journeys

Want to understand how FIRE works in practice? Check out what our clients have to say as well as
these impact stories from our partners. You can find more details on our impact here.

Meeting this moment with strength: How Women Enabled International built financial resilience for the long haul

Read Impact Story

The FIRE Journey of Indonesia Corruption Watch

Read Impact Story

The FIRE Journey of Coordenadoria Ecumênica de Serviço

Read Impact Story

Testimonials

Speaking of finance in visuals, the financial health dashboard made the information really accessible. I loved the small group sessions; that created an opportunity to know participants. Even though the workshop was online, there was a great sense of community.

It was great knowing that we are not alone in the challenges we face as an organization and dispelling the belief that we are in competition with other organizations. I absolutely loved that.

As a CFO, the strategic finance section was my favorite part. I've been working in nonprofit finance for over 20 years and this was by far the most helpful way of thinking about financial health and the mix of funding sources.

Undergoing the training together taught us how our team’s finance, communications, and program departments can be developed and presented to donors as moving parts of one machine. When coordinated, they result in a stronger strategic plan and a team that is more in sync to move toward a common goal.

The program was immensely valuable to every team member who participated and we learned so much. We are more comfortable with the fundraising process, especially asking for core funding; we have more direction in terms of capital reserves and have created new financial policies. The FIRE program also, crucially, provided the language with which to engage non-financial and non-communications team members as well as material for re-training.

Non-profits often come into the fund-raising space with guilt. They believe funders have the power. And you don’t want to ask for too much in case the answer is ‘No’. The FIRE Program gave me the tools to be vulnerable to funders. To say — this is where I am, and this is what I need.

We learned what a reserve fund could do and how we could invest our money. Now thanks to FIRE we have an operational reserve, an emergency reserve, and a staff protection reserve.

FIRE helped bring us forward. The program created structure, gave us benchmarking and helped us understand where we need to do and what needed attention.