ICA Fund

I coached the ICA Fund team through the Lean Impact framework to accelerate innovation, test assumptions with real-world stakeholders, and make critical decisions about scaling their model with underrepresented entrepreneurs.

Activities
Scale Strategy Workshop Facilitation, Lean Impact Training, Executive Coaching, Prototyping

Outcome
Refined scale strategy, clearer programmatic focus

Issue Area
Underrepresented Entrepreneurs

Geography
Oakland and the Bay Area

Length
9 months

Through Spring Impact, I train and coach organizations on Lean Impact, a powerful framework to innovate more quickly and strategically towards a scalable strategy for impact. I usually work with organizations 1:1, but have also developed and delivered group cohort and asynchronous learning experiences along with my Spring Impact colleagues.

In 2024,ICA Fund, a nonprofit providing “coaching, connections, and capital to grow great Bay Area businesses,” enlisted Spring Impact to help them explore scale strategies.

My co-facilitator and I guided the ICA Fund team through setting shared goals, prototyping MVPs, testing with users, and responding to data.

As usual, we found that we could iterate and learn much faster than we thought we could. Within weeks, we had big ideas and assumptions on paper that had previously only been in the team’s heads.

Soon, we had prototype pitch decks and one-pagers ready to share with potential partners. Most importantly, we quickly had real reactions from the stakeholders who would be critical to our draft scale strategy. Because this innovation journey was so critical to ICA Fund’s core strategy, Spring Impact was also invited to Board meetings to share and support the team through key organizational decisions about programming, funding and talent.

This experience is typical in my Lean Impact work with over 20 nonprofit organizations. When real insights start pouring in from our target audience, teams can begin validating or invalidating long-held assumptions. Because insights can often surface more questions, the process can sometimes challenging and even circular. But with the help of a guide, “relentlessly seeking impact at scale” can also be incredibly rewarding. For mission-driven leaders and social changemakers, this process cuts to the real reason we’re all here - to make a difference at scale.

Read about a sample workshop