Portfolio Support
Leveraging our team’s expertise to provide guidance and problem-solving on topics ranging from customer discovery to long-term strategic vision.
While only the winners of the Ivory Prize receive a financial award, all of the Top 25 finalists receive access to a range of benefits designed to accelerate their growth and maximize their impact. These benefits include the following:
EXPOSURE & ACCESS to key industry events and speaking opportunities.
HIGH-QUALITY CONNECTIONS to important stakeholders in the housing industry, including potential funders, partners, and customers across both our national network and in Utah.
SPONSORED STUDENT INTERNS through our Student Associate program at the University of Utah and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ Ivory Fellowship in Housing Affordability and Sustainability. These placements provide critical capacity for organizations as they grow their impact and help the next generation of housing leaders launch careers in the industry.
PRO BONO SUPPORT leveraging our team’s expertise to provide guidance and problem-solving on topics ranging from customer discovery to long-term strategic vision. You can see examples of our past research projects below.
Project Type
Business Strategy
Housing Education Research
Challenge
Foyer, a savings and homebuying education app for first time homebuyers, wanted to understand how to better serve their customers navigating down payment assistance programs.
Solution
After conducting interviews with first-time hombeuyers, mortgage lenders, and state housing authorities, developed a comprehensive customer journey map to understand what educational gaps existed that Foyer could fill. Also created a Down Payment Assistance Ecosystem map to understand the various players in the space, and the type of financing opportunities they provide to consumers.
Student Leads
Project Type
Construction Innovation
Business Strategy
Challenge
The Other Side Village, a self-reliant master planned community providing permanent housing to chronically unhoused individuals, is entering Phase Two of construction, and needs to bring 450+ units to the market. As a nonprofit, they want to find innovative construction methods to keep construction prices low, but still deliver high-quality housing.
Solution
A recommendation list of early-stage innovative companies that are bringing creative solutions to infrastructure, foundations, and workforce training that are mission aligned with The Other Side Village, and can bring cost-competitive solutions to unique site needs.
Student Leads
Project Type
Fundraising
Business Strategy
Challenge
Nesterly, a platform for intergenerational homesharing, works with nonprofits and quasigovernmental groups across the country to create homesharing programs. Sourcing funding for these programs is challenging, as homesharing is an emerging concept in emergency housing and language on funding for this use is vague.
Solution
Funding resource tracker that covers state and federal funding opportunities, as well as philanthropic grants specializing in elder care, unhoused individuals, and other at-risk groups with a focus on providing stable housing.
Student Leads
Project Type
Impact Measurement
Challenge
Blackstar Stability, a fund focused on addressing predatory lending practices, wanted to build a report that would illustrate its impact to current and future funders, with a special emphasis on non-financial outcomes of its customers.
Solution
Wrote an impact report that utilized customer surveys to demonstrate how Blackstar's mission positively impacted Social Determinants of Health outcomes, and the benefits of moving individuals to traditional financing.