Shahar's Impala Journey

Shahar's Impala Journey

When I started my nonprofit, it took 18 months to answer one question: who actually funds this kind of work?

(...I thought it would take 3)

There was no directory or list. The only thing I had were a few names passed along by people who thought they might know someone.

It took a lot of manual data collection and networking to get anywhere.

Eventually, the funding came together. But along the way, I realized the problem wasn’t mine alone.

Nonprofits didn’t know who to approach or how to prioritize.
Foundations didn’t have a clear view of the ecosystems they were funding.
Advisors were rebuilding the same maps by hand for every client.

At one point, a philanthropist introduced me to a senior leader at The Bridgespan Group, one of the leading philanthropic consultancies in the country. When I described what I had struggled with, his response was immediate. They would pay for this kind of infrastructure. They were already spending heavily to assemble it by hand.

So I co-founded Impala to build it. 

Today, we map 213 million relationships and 25 million grants between millions of funders and nonprofits across the United States. Thousands of organizations across all 50 states and internationally use the platform to see their ecosystems clearly and make faster, more informed decisions.

The problem I faced years ago is the same problem most of the sector still faces today. We're just making it solvable.