Ramping up the operations of a newly launched foundation
Why The Asian American Foundation decided to collaborate with The Ops Collective
As a result of the waves of anti-Asian violence sweeping the United States, The Asian American Foundation found itself wanting to launch and scale their work much faster than originally anticipated. With a faster launch and need for programming supporting the Asian American community, TAAF found themselves in need of robust operations support as they were scaling their programmatic and organizational work.
They needed someone to lead all operations work, to help develop policies and procedures, and to help build out their operational capacity. The goal was always to be an interim solution - to get the operational infrastructure to a point where hires could be made, and a full-time, permanent COO and supporting operational staff could come in and move the work forward.
The Ops Collective helped The Asian American Foundation by
Supporting the recruiting and hiring of an operations team
Developing policies and workflows for vendor and contract management
Building out people operations policies around timekeeping, PTO, and staff support
Supporting in the recruitment of a Finance Director and supporting COO to build out all financial policies and procedures
Supporting the program team as the worked to refine their grant making capacity
Worked closely with the development team to ensure incoming funding was being tracked appropriately
Provide support to the program team related to event planning and execution
Support TAAF in a full spin-out from their previous fiscal sponsor, project managing their move to a professional employment organization.
Outcomes of our work together
TAAF is now a truly independent organization, with a full operations team to support the programmatic work of the organization.
Our work provided TAAF with the necessary building blocks and operational infrastructure to push their grant making forward, to raise additional funds, to support community organizations, and to ensure that their goal of supporting the Asian American community came to fruition.
Staff now have policies and procedures in place related to both internal work (vendor and contract management, grants management, etc.), and financials, payroll, accounts receivable, etc. all have a clear process.
By supporting in the recruiting and hiring process for their operations team, we were able to clear the runway for TAAF to really fulfill their programmatic goals.
Bio
“The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) believes that a better America is not only possible but necessary.
Even as the fastest growing ethnic group in the country, AAPI communities are severely underfunded. We are consistently denied opportunities for professional advancement. Our most vulnerable are overlooked and violently assaulted daily. We want to close the vast AAPI economic and influence gap. Our board has made the largest philanthropic commitment in history focused specifically on AAPI communities—and this is just the beginning.
We serve the 23 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who strive to build on the promise of America and create a future that we—and the next generation—deserve. Every single one of us is part of the American story—and The Asian American Foundation is here to stand up for us all.”
