Constellation uses the best available information to make the best possible investments in the fight against poverty in the Twin Cities. As data and research is thoughtfully used around the world to reshape industries and rethink complicated problems, decisions in philanthropy can often be driven by intuition and anecdote. With one-in-five residents of the Twin Cities living in poverty, our philanthropic community must use the best available information to strategically focus its finite resources on the nonprofit interventions providing the largest poverty-fighting impacts.

Constellation takes an outcome-driven approach to addressing the fight against poverty by prioritizing evidence over anecdote. We leverage peer-reviewed research, local demographic information, and data from nonprofits to conduct careful benefit-cost analyses that drive our decisions and measure our impact. We match our best-in-class quantitative analysis with careful qualitative evaluations in order to fund poverty-fighting interventions that are the most impactful among available options.

To learn more about Constellation’s rigorous metric-driven evaluation process, click here.

Constellation partners closely with our community’s most impactful poverty-fighting organizations to help grow their impact. In the for-profit world, a sophisticated ecosystem of funding sources and support networks exists to help scale great ideas into big businesses. However, in the nonprofit realm, too many great ideas are stifled by a lack of access to flexible funding and other critical capacity-building supports.

Constellation takes a different approach. Once we have rigorously selected our grantees, we partner closely with these organizations to bolster their successes and scale their impacts. This includes providing grants, usually in the form of unrestricted funding to holistically support their growth. We also connect them with pro bono partners to provide expertise in leadership development, strategic planning, and other key areas of need.