Building the Plane While Flying It
STRATEGIC ARCHITECTURE FOR EMERGING STATE INFRASTRUCTURE
Launching a state table, donor alliance, or civic engagement coalition is one of the most demanding things you can do in this movement. You're building a durable institution while managing urgent political cycles, proving your value to skeptical partners and funders, and navigating compliance landscapes that shift under your feet. You don't need theory — you need someone who's done it.
OUR SERVICES
We lived it.
Zack Burgin founded the Nebraska Civic Engagement Table from a $250K concept into a $1.5M independent 501(c)(3) with over 70 partners in five years.
We scaled it.
At State Voices, we supported 24 state affiliates — coaching and onboarding 4 new tables into the national network.
We systematized it.
J. Petersen specializes in the engine room: the fundraising, data, and compliance infrastructure that lets vision scale.
What We Do
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Coalition work starts with clear rules. We help you formalize partnership agreements, navigate c3/c4 compliance, structure your board's authority, and chart a path to independent 501(c)(3) status — so your organization is protected and your team can move with confidence.xt goes here
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The hardest part of coalition work is moving partners from attendees to owners. We conduct partner capacity audits, design and facilitate strategic planning retreats, and build the standardized planning tools that turn loose commitments into shared accountability.
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Whether you're hiring your first director or supporting a leader through a hard season, we help you define the right leadership profile for your landscape, conduct rigorous vetting, and provide ongoing executive mentorship — confidential, practical, and grounded in real movement experience.
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To become a fixture in your state, you have to control resources. We build individual and grassroots giving programs, manage grant writing and reporting, and design the re-granting workflows that let you move money to partners efficiently — and compliantly.
Responsive, Not Prescriptive.
Every state's political landscape is different. Every coalition has its own history, its own fault lines, its own potential. We begin every engagement by listening — and we build from there.
Whether you need a full strategic build-out, a specific compliance fix, or a facilitator to get your coalition unstuck, we're your partners in the work.
