Leadership couldn’t answer basic questions about their own portfolio.
National civic organization · two program centers · multi-year, multi-city initiatives
The client
A national organization that partners with cities to strengthen governance.
Two major program centers run complex, multi-year initiatives — early learning systems, workforce development, infrastructure policy — each involving multiple cities, staff, funders, and measurement frameworks.
The challenge
The portfolio outgrew the view of it.
As the work expanded across more cities and program areas, leadership lost sight of what was actually running.
- No single view of which cities were engaged across all initiatives — cumulative impact was invisible
- Leadership couldn’t answer “How many initiatives are we running?” or “What’s our total footprint in California?”
- Cross-program collaboration missed because centers didn’t know what the others were doing in the same cities
- Systems treated new cohorts and phases as separate projects, losing the history
- No unified view of staff working across multiple initiatives in different roles
- Multiple funders, initiatives, and grants creating a compliance and tracking nightmare
The solution
One platform, the whole portfolio.
A program management platform in Airtable that gives leadership a single, real-time view across the portfolio while preserving how initiatives actually evolve.
Role-specific dashboards
Each program center sees its own work; leadership sees the footprint across every city at once.
Cross-program visibility
What the other center is doing in the same city is visible before the trip is booked, not after.
Phase-aware tracking
Cohorts and phases stay attached to the initiative they belong to, so history survives the next round.
The results
What changed.
- A single view of the full portfolio — cities, initiatives, and footprint, answerable on demand
- Cross-program collaboration surfaced instead of missed
- Initiative history preserved across cohorts and phases
- Grant and financial tracking aligned with program progress
Keep reading
Related work.
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