One Portfolio View Across Nine Grant Programs
How Rudd Consulting helped the Cisco Foundation bring nine philanthropic portfolios, serving more than 800 nonprofits worldwide, into one connected operation.
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The Challenge
The Cisco Foundation runs nine philanthropic investment portfolios that support more than 800 nonprofits around the world. Each portfolio had built its own way of managing grants, spread across spreadsheets, email, shared file storage, chat rooms, and three separately designed Airtable bases.
When leadership asked a simple question, the answer had to be pieced together by hand.
“Whenever an executive inquired about, for example, the status of grant-making in Africa, we found ourselves scrambling to compile the information.”
Portfolio Manager, Cisco Foundation
Teams were also working with the same nonprofit organizations across different portfolios, often without knowing it. Tracking disbursements, understanding regional and thematic performance, and spotting gaps all depended on manual effort.
A Reporting Problem With an Operating Cause
The request looked like a reporting problem. Discovery showed it was an operating one: each portfolio had defined its work differently. Rudd found hundreds of field variations across the existing tools, including ten different versions of a grant status.
No dashboard could produce a reliable answer until the Foundation agreed on shared definitions for how grants, organizations, and portfolios should be tracked. Discovery made those decisions explicit.
Shared Definitions, Room for Each Team
Rudd designed a hub-and-spoke operating model. Each portfolio team kept a workspace tailored to how it works, while shared definitions and shared lists of organizations, contacts, and countries connected every team to a central view for leadership.
The result respected real differences between portfolios without letting them become silos. Portfolio managers, Finance, and leadership each work from the same information, shaped to what they need to see.
From Scrambling to a Unified Answer
Executives now get a clear view across all nine portfolios, and the Foundation can answer questions like which organizations in a region received funding in a given quarter, and for what.
“The ability to present a unified narrative with compelling data is paramount. We frequently receive impromptu inquiries from executives, making the swift delivery of precise, data-driven responses incredibly important.”
Portfolio Manager, Cisco Foundation
Grant review, which requires approval from the Foundation’s Trustees, moved out of email and chat into a shared process everyone can see.
“Now, we have a simple interface that shows who is reviewing what, when, and for how long. The time savings have been immense.”
Portfolio Manager, Cisco Foundation
Finance joined the same environment for payment tracking, and portfolio managers gained visibility into each other’s nonprofit relationships.
“Gaining visibility into the activities of other portfolio managers with our many nonprofit organizations is incredibly valuable. This serves as our CRM, significantly aiding us in avoiding duplication.”
Portfolio Manager, Cisco Foundation
People Learned by Using It
Teams were encouraged to work in the system early and learn by doing, and the Foundation created a dedicated space in its own chat tools where colleagues answered each other’s questions. Portfolio managers and Finance went on to shape their own views of the work.
Hear It From the Cisco Foundation
Highlights from a conversation with the Cisco Foundation and Rudd Consulting.
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