Get it right. Get it done.
Whether you're giving, investing, or building - we'll help you build capacity, find the right partners, and move fast - to amplify and grow your impact.
For funders and family offices
If you face these kinds of challenges:
- Your giving hasn't kept pace with your values.
- There's no structure connecting your capital to the outcomes you actually care about.
- You're not sure the opportunities in front of you have been properly vetted.
We help you build the strategy and the structures - including blended and impact-investment vehicles where they fit - that turn intention into measurable impact, and vet the opportunities before your capital moves toward them.
For non-profits
If you face these kinds of challenges:
- Your mission has outgrown your organization.
- Your donor base is thin, aging, or too concentrated in one source.
- Your board and your funders aren't seeing the same picture.
We help you sharpen the strategy, formalize the governance, build the fundraising infrastructure the mission needs to grow, and make introductions to funders who can take it there.
For founders
If you face these kinds of challenges:
- Your business has a positive impact. We make sure investors and partners understand your mission and financial potential.
- You need more than capital - we offer the operational, regulatory, or market-entry expertise to execute.
- You don't have the network to reach the partners, distributors, or specialists this stage of growth requires.
We help you sharpen the story, build the partnerships and operational capacity the business needs to grow, and connect to investors and cross-sector partners aligned with what you're building. We keep clear lines around our own equity involvement.
Our Work
Featured in the work below
Impact compounds when worlds connect.
Iva Kaufman Associates is a boutique advisory firm working at the intersection of philanthropy, nonprofits, and mission-driven ventures.
Most advisors live in one lane - a foundation consultant who never touches a startup, a venture firm that never thinks about a grant. IKA was built differently. We advise funders on where their capital can do the most good, help nonprofits build the strategy and infrastructure to scale, and work alongside ventures solving real problems in health, sustainability, and community well-being.
Because we operate across all three, we see connections others miss - the funder who should meet a venture, the nonprofit model a family office has been waiting to back. That cross-sector vantage point is one of the things that makes this work possible.
- Impact over activityWe measure success by outcomes that matter, not motion. Every engagement ties back to measurable good.
- Cross-sector by designPhilanthropy, nonprofits, and ventures should all function within one system. We build solutions that draw on all three.
- Diligence firstWe vet opportunities rigorously before we attach your name to them.
- Relationships, not transactionsEvery engagement gets real attention and follow-through. We stay close enough, for long enough, that the work - and the trust - compounds.
- Aligned to the SDGsOur work maps to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 agenda for people and planet, honoring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Earth Charter.
- A deployable networkBehind the firm sits a bench of specialists and a broad network we have available for every engagement.
Our Team
The firm is built as a layered team - Principals, Associates, Partner firms, and our own IKA Activate network - all available for every engagement. A senior partner still owns each engagement end to end, so you always have a single point of accountability, however many layers stand behind it.
These are firms and people we work alongside directly on live engagements - not names we admire from a distance, but relationships we keep choosing to return to because their work - and working with them - is so aligned and so good. Each brings something IKA doesn't build in-house; by including them in our work, we extend what IKA delivers for clients.
Led by Stephen Shaff
Led by Liz Rubin
Led by Steven Keays
Led by Donnetta Campbell
Led by Robert RubinsteinBeyond our internal team and our Partners, IKA has created IKA Activate - a global network we selectively activate on your behalf when a project calls for it. Activators are vetted experts, connectors, and doers who bring their own networks to the table, offering the advice, connections, and partners a specific need calls for.
If you're already working with us, your IKA lead can explore with you whether reaching into Activate would help meet your specific need; it's a network we reach out to using our proprietary digital platform, not a directory you browse yourself.
If you're a professional, expert, or connector interested in joining this community - bringing your own expertise and network to work alongside IKA on values-aligned projects - learn more and apply here.
We work across all three - and where it's the right call, we bring integrated, cross-sector solutions a single-lane advisor can't.