100%

of leaders reported feeling more optimistic about their organization’s prospects for financial resilience after attending FIRE

97%

of participants would recommend FIRE to their friends and colleagues

95%

of participants said that the program met or exceeded their expectations

Even now, as civil society faces a growing crisis of resourcing, participants who have completed FIRE are navigating the current moment from a position of strength.

FIRE helped us to elevate our finances to a strategic level. It helped us to enhance our policy environment, especially around investment and reserves and what we could do with the money that we had. We have gone from zero reserve funds to an organization that's able to sustain ourselves for 24 months.

Patricia Munabi Babiha

Forum for Women in Democracy

It’s easy to get siloed as you grow fast. FIRE certainly made us stronger and more cohesive as a team where we’re all fundraisers, where the responsibility for financial resilience is on all of us, where we all celebrate our successes.

Jenny Lindstrom

Women Enabled International

We are in a good position right now because we have savings and, thanks to the strategic budget, we can proactively, rather than reactively, reflect on and evaluate sustainability options.

Juliana Salazar

Fundación Ideas para la Paz

On day 1 of the FIRE training, I said that misery loves company; we lost 40% of our income from USAID. But now I don't feel miserable anymore. Our purpose and goals define us, not our funding. Money will always come. I’m just happy that we’re all in this together.

Abella Bateyunga

Tanzania Bora Initiative

Curious to learn more? Here are three ways:

1) Dive deeper into 8 unique FIRE journeys

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2) Read what other funders have to say about FIRE

By working at the intersection of programs, strategic finance, resource mobilization, and communications, FIRE equips nonprofits with the tools to attract more flexible, long-term funding from a variety of sources and create capital reserves. They realize a huge shift in perspectives and organizational culture, transforming their relationship to money… For social change organizations to be innovative and adequately respond to intersecting global crises, they must adopt a long-term approach to financial resilience. We believe FIRE can be a model for funders to promote long-term financial health in nonprofits.

The Spring team is truly impressive in the way they coordinated to work with and develop the group. The content is quite what I expected in terms of scope and detail and I am already familiar with their methodology but the impact shows in how they relate to and engage the groups! The way they delivered the FIRE training well exceeded my expectations.

The FIRE training is engaging and effective, sparking interest in applying theory to practice. The Spring Team excelled in delivery and facilitation. I am excited that after the training, the discussions on resource mobilization, funding diversification, and reserve-building have now expanded beyond financial managers to include directors and program managers, who apply these insights in grant negotiations with funders. Participants also demonstrated a deeper appreciation for strategic planning and finance, with one organization developing its first 5-year strategic plan after previously relying only on annual planning. Overall, the training exceeded expectations, strengthening partners’ capacity to enhance organizational resilience.

I appreciate Spring’s truly diverse team of professionals who are culturally sensitive and customize their programs to the participants. I value their model because they appreciate that the Global North model doesn’t work in the Global South and instead of lecturing, they are focused on facilitating a dialogue that allows more people to participate, to share views and listen to other voices. Our grantees have been more proactive since completing the FIRE trainings.

Monica Aleman

International Program Director of Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice at the Ford Foundation

Björn Druse

Chief Financial Officer, Tenure Facility

Adyani Widowati

Principal at Luminate Asia

Alberto Cerda Silva

Former Program Officer of Technology and Society at the Ford Foundation

We partner with funders globally to support their grantees and staff in building greater mission aligned financial strength.

The following videos are from "Reimagining Resilience: Sustaining our mission in a changing world", a 2025 conversation series by Spring.

Community crowdfunding

Margarita Campuzano, of Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental, on their experience crowdfunding for strategic litigation.

Property ownership

Mukami Marete, of UHAI - The East Africa Sexual Health and Rights Initiative, shared the organization's 10-year journey in real estate investments to own their office space and rent out apartments as a means of income generation.