Before seeking funding, we needed to know where to start

I was hired to help seek funding. But in one of our first meetings, an earlier question surfaced: what exactly were we going to fund?

The initiative aimed to expand cardioprotection across communities. It had enormous ambition and a committed team that had already made meaningful progress. Several defibrillators had even been installed.

There was real work behind it. What was missing was a structure that would help us decide where to continue, organize a pilot and learn from it before replicating the model.

I remember thinking: the idea makes tremendous sense, but how do we make it manageable? Where do we begin?

A large vision needs a clearly defined first step

When an initiative has significant growth potential, choosing a starting point can be difficult. There are needs in many places, different possibilities for collaboration and valid reasons for wanting to do everything at once.

Preparing a funding proposal forced us to become specific.

We needed to define how locations would be selected, which activities should accompany the installation of the equipment and how that work would be organized within a pilot. We also needed to explain what we would learn from that first stage and which conditions would allow us to take it elsewhere.

My contribution was to work with the sustainability team to give structure to what they had already been building.

That came with a particular difficulty: we had to deconstruct part of what had already been done.

A pilot had to help us test how the whole model worked, not merely add more installations.

Revisiting progress is difficult too

When a team has invested time and effort in an initiative, revisiting its decisions requires care. There is accumulated knowledge, established relationships and a reason behind every step.

I was not starting with a blank page. I joined work that already had a history.

I had to understand that history while also examining what needed to be organized differently to move forward. What had been enough to launch the first actions was not necessarily enough to sustain expansion.

One of the central decisions was to treat the pilot as an opportunity to learn.

That change in perspective allowed us to develop a more concrete proposal that a potential funder could evaluate: a defined scope, a sequence of activities, resource requirements and monitoring mechanisms.

The proposal progressed, but another constraint emerged

This story does not end with the funding we expected.

The company decided not to continue along that path. Seeking external funds involved requirements and institutional exposure that it was not prepared to assume at the time.

It was difficult.

We had invested real effort in organizing an initiative we believed in. I felt we were close, and that those conditions should have been discussed earlier.

The project continued growing as a corporate initiative, although without the community reach we had imagined. I value having helped give it structure, while still feeling the weight of what it might have become.

Both things are true.

The conversation I would have first today

If I were to receive a similar engagement again, I would not meet only with the department championing the project.

I would bring the framework to those with authority to approve it, commit resources and assume its implications. And I would do so before developing the entire proposal.

I would need to discuss the scope of the funding search, the information the organization would be willing to present, the responsibilities it could accept and who would have the final authority to move forward.

I would also ask what conditions could stop the process.

At the time, my attention was focused on turning a broad initiative into a fundable project. Today, I would spend more time at the outset confirming that the organization both wants and is able to take that journey.

The backing of the team developing a proposal is essential, but it is not the same as a decision by the organization as a whole.

What the experience taught me

That stage also opened the door for me to participate later in building an industry initiative. The relationships and work continued, although through a different path than the one I had expected.

That is why I do not remember the project only for what came to a stop. I remember a team that had already accomplished a great deal, the conversations required to organize an enormous ambition and the effort to find a first stage that made sense.

It also changed how I look at sustainability programs.

Now, when we talk about impact, I want to understand both the project design and the internal decisions that sustain it: who backs it, which commitments the organization can make and what will happen when the initiative needs more than the enthusiasm of its sponsoring team.