Designing for Mission: Restructuring a Nonprofit for Greater Impact at Horizon Foundation

Horizon Community Foundation is a philanthropic organization distributing $24M annually across 180 active grants in education, health equity, and economic mobility. Four years ago it managed $8M across 60 grants with 18 staff. Today it has 52 staff and the same organizational structure: three Program Directors who operate autonomously, a small operations team, and a Grants Management function that was never redesigned after the growth. The three Program Directors have built their own systems, hire independently, and rarely collaborate despite significant thematic overlap. The Grants Manager is managing 180 grants with two coordinators and a spreadsheet system that was designed for 60. Board meetings now run three hours longer than the agenda because the ED is trying to synthesize work from three independent silos. Eleven of 52 staff have been employed less than 12 months. Three grant recipients have flagged inconsistent communication from the foundation.

Key Stakeholders

Dr. Tamara Reid

Executive Director

Carlos Mendez

Program Director, Economic Mobility

Angela Wu

Grants Manager

Board Chair Judith Okafor

Board Chair

Learning Objectives

• Apply organizational design principles to a nonprofit context with mission-driven constraints
• Diagnose the structural misalignment between an organization's current scale and its inherited design
• Balance the need for integration and standardization with programmatic autonomy and culture
• Design a phased restructuring plan appropriate to a resource-constrained environment
• Engage stakeholders across a siloed organization in a participatory design process