What We Do

MilwayPLUS has applied expertise in organizational development, strategy, research, and communications to help foundations and nonprofits gain insight to set new sights, make plans to achieve goals, and create content to influence others. As of April 2024, we are a referral service. Founder and principal Katie Smith Milway has moved to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

About

About MilwayPLUS

MilwayPLUS is deeply collaborative, working with clients as partners,
with a focus on research, content development, and influence strategies for funders, and organizational change and innovation strategies for foundation programs and select nonprofits. Katie Smith Milway, founder and principal, has a background in journalism, sustainability, nonprofit management, strategy consulting, organizational development and governance. Her network of preferred providers bring skills in data-driven analysis, DEI, market research, media production, and design. She is a frequent speaker at convenings on research-related themes.

Milway is also a senior advisor at The Bridgespan Group, where for a decade she served as partner and head of the knowledge practice, leading research and multimedia content development in the US and India. And she serves as adjunct faculty at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University. Prior to Bridgespan, Katie spent 14 years at Bain & Company, consulting to clients in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, then as the firm’s founding editorial director and global publisher.

She began her journalism career at the Wall Street Journal, and her nonprofit service at Food for the Hungry. Her work in sustainable development across four continents includes program design and measurement, donor development and communications and organizational effectiveness.

Shazeen

Virani

Shazeen Virani is a social sector strategist known for data-driven insights and their practical applications for nonprofits and funders. After eight years at The Bridgespan Group, she founded Virtue Strategic Advisors, sv@byvirtue.org, to build capacity and results for the sector.

Cheryl Stallworth

Cheryl Stallworth is a proven market research strategist, storyteller and trailblazer at organizations like Colgate-Palmolive, Kantar / Firefly, and now ShedLight.org.

Yonatan Araia

Yonatan Araia, an alumnus of The Bridgespan Group, is an independent researcher and analyst with experience in strategy consulting, grantmaking, and economic development policy

Patrick Rooney

Patrick Rooney is a philanthropy & policy strategist who studies DAF, HNWI & everyday givers. He is
Professor Emeritus of Economics and Philanthropic Studies, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, IU, and cofounder of the Philanthropy Panel Study.

Evelyn Ontaneda

Evelyn Ontaneda helps organizations build cultures that value and practice racial equity, diversity, and inclusion to achieve greater social justice and organizational success. Her identity as an Indigenous Latinx, first-generation American woman deeply informs her approach. Learn more at OntanedaConsulting.com

Tteja Senthilnathan

Tteja Senthilnathan, a alumna of Cambridge and Columbia universities, is an independent researcher and analyst who has worked in youth and family philanthropy

Bill Littlefield

Bill Littlefield is an acclaimed interviewer, storyteller and three-decade veteran of National Public Radio.

Shelagh Leahy

Shelagh Leahy has worked as a producer, showrunner and executive at ABC News, CNN, MSNBC and PBS.

Sam Howe Verhovek

Sam Howe Verhovek is an author and veteran reporter/writer forThe New York Times, Los Angeles Times and National Geographic.

About MilwayPLUS Services

Thought Leadership

MilwayPLUS collaborates with leaders in philanthropy and nonprofit networks to develop research projects and shape them into opinions, cases, articles, white papers, books and digital formats that help shift thinking and behavior in the sector. Milway supports clients through publication to ensure content packages are edited, designed and placed strategically on websites and in leading external publications.

Case:

Funding Feedback. The case details how Fund for Shared Insight built the sub-field of feedback to complement program monitoring and evaluation.

White Paper & Case Collection:

Influencing Funder Practice. Research commissioned by Ford Foundation examined 12 multiyear initiatives aimed at spurring funders to give more effectively, and produced a framework for influencing the “how” of philanthropy, captured in a white paper and six practical cases.

Book (Editorial Direction):

Undercurrents: Channeling Outrage to Spark Practical Activism. Milway worked with author Steve Davis to structure his insights and experience into a proposal, pitch to publishers, contract the book and qualify a ghost writer.

Digital Playbook:

Playbook for Nonprofit Digital Transformation. Hopelab and Milway surveyed nonprofit digital practices and created a guide to the ‘how’ of digitizing service delivery for 21st Century constituents.

Article:

The Myth of Perpetuity in Foundation Strategy. An examination of founding articles of the top 50 private foundations and their endowment recoveries post 2009 recession found leeway to raise payouts.

Influence Campaigns

MilwayPLUS collaborates with leaders of fields and movements to create campaigns to engage and tip sector practice and public will on issues core to society, people and planet. Tools for the task include:

Curating and producing multimedia series such as The Power of Feedback (promoting the what, why and how of feedback as a critical element of measuring social impact.)
Auditing and transposing academic research into powerful, practitioner insights: e.g. Inclusive Philanthropy and The Eight Myths of US Philanthropy (promoting generosity for life)
Co-developing and curating field-specific newsletters, e.g. The Listening Post (promoting new ideas in the field of effective philanthropy)

Innovation & Growth

MilwayPLUS works with a handful of nonprofit content creators and leaders in community development on growth and innovation strategies, helping them to define their theories of change and goals for impact and develop funding models and outreach plans to raise resources to achieve them.

MilwayPLUS clients include:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Blue Meridian Partners

The Bridgespan Group

The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Ford Foundation

Fund for Shared Insight

Giving Compass

Hagar’s Sisters

William + Flora Hewlett Foundation

Hopelab

Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

The Lodestar Foundation

Pace Center for Girls

ProInspire

Project Evident

Rauch Foundation

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities

Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions, Arizona State University

World Vision

MilwayPLUS has authored a number of articles on philanthropy and nonprofit strategy and management

Classic

Collection

Now on Sale

How Madam C.J. Walker Built Racial Equity Into Her Business
hbr.org

Clients

Services

Thought Leadership

Cases:

Funding Feedback. The case details how Fund for Shared Insight built the sub-field of feedback to complement program monitoring and evaluation.

Hard Virtues of Soft Program Measurement: Two cases show how feedback measures link to outcomes - even predict them.

White Papers:

Building Equitable Evidence of Social Impact. Research commissioned by Pace Center for Girls conducted focus groups with 15 nonprofits that involved participants in program evaluation, finding causal links to outcomes and ripple effects that built greater equity across operations. White paper influence strategy spun out articles for nonprofits, philanthropy, advocacy efforts and family foundations.

Book:

Undercurrents: Channeling Outrage to Spark Practical Activism. We distilled and structured author’s insights and experience into a book proposal, pitched it to publishers, contracted the manuscript, and qualified a collaborating writer.

Digital Toolkits:

Playbook for Nonprofit Digital Transformation. We co-developed a national survey of nonprofit digital practices and wove results together with client’s experience into a data-driven guide to the “why” and “how” of digitizing service delivery to 21st century constituents.

Accelerating Equitable Grantmaking: Commissioned by Ford Foundation, we created a research panel of 30 leaders of nonprofits and funders that had experienced a significant increase in multiyear, flexible funding in recent years (as grantmaker or grantee). Through interviews, a survey and focus groups we developed a short list of accelerators for and barriers to change, and distilled findings into a toolkit for foundation staff, hosted and promoted by Ariadne Edge Funder Alliance on fundingforrealchange.org

Articles:

The Myth of Perpetuity in Foundation Strategy. An examination of founding articles of the top 50 private foundations and their endowment recoveries post 2009 recession found leeway to raise payouts.

Five Accelerators of Equitable Grantmaking and How to Harness Them. This SSIR article conveys findings from the Ford-commissioned Accelerating Equitable Grantmaking study (see above) and raised awareness of the foundation staff toolkit.

How Madam C.J. Walker Built Racial Equity Into Her Business. A review of Prof. Tyrone McKinley Freeman's book manuscript on the philanthropy of African-American hair care product entrepreneur, Madam C.J. Walker surfaced approaches that could help any organization build racial equity into the way it works.

Influence Strategies

MilwayPLUS collaborates with leaders of fields and movements to create campaigns to engage and tip sector practice and public will on issues core to society and the planet. Tools for the task include:

Curating and producing multimedia series such as The Power of Feedback (promoting the what, why, and how of feedback as a critical element of measuring social impact).
Auditing and transposing academic research into powerful, practitioner insights: e.g. Inclusive Philanthropy and The Eight Myths of US Philanthropy (promoting generosity for life).
Co-developing and curating field-specific newsletters, e.g. The Listening Post (promoting new ideas in the field of effective philanthropy).
Creating and refreshing digital artifacts including explainer videos, websites, campaign launch materials such as press releases news alerts, and social media campaigns. e.g. the launch of OutcomesX.com social outcomes marketplace, with video, site rebuild & PR.

Foundation & Nonprofit Strategy & Implementation

MilwayPLUS works with select leaders at foundations and nonprofits to refresh their program and organizational strategies for growth or change. This work involves defining theories of change and goals for impact, and developing grantmaking strategies or funding models, and operational plans to achieve them. E.g.'s The Chronicle of Philanthropy's nonprofit transformation; New England Conservatory of Music's theory of change and funder landscape.