See the pattern across your grantees - and what IPC can be commissioned to fix.
The Portfolio Pattern Scan is a 7-minute review for funders and CSI heads. Answer twelve questions about what you keep seeing across your delivery partners - reporting that never quite works, delivery plans that never arrive, beneficiaries that aren't quite the right ones - and receive a portfolio brief that names the recurring gaps and shows the IPC programmes that would close them, delivered to your grantees on your behalf.
- Time
- ~7 min
- Designed for
- Funders, CSI heads
- Output
- Portfolio brief
A shared language for what's actually going on in your portfolio.
Every funder senses the recurring issues but rarely has the time to name them structurally. The scan does that in seven minutes - and points at the programmes worth commissioning across the portfolio.
See which patterns are worth investing in fixing before you re-sign the next round of grants.
Understand whether the issue is a grantee-by-grantee thing or a portfolio-wide capability gap.
Use the scan to shape the programme from the outcome backwards, and to define what capacity partners will need.
Give your board a clear picture of the state of the portfolio - and the plan to address it.
Portfolio-wide programmes, paid by the funder, delivered to the grantees.
Every pattern the scan surfaces maps to a concrete IPC programme. Here are the most common ones funders commission.
- MEL Framework Co-Design
A shared MEL framework agreed between funder and grantees - indicators, data flow, cadence - so reporting means the same thing to both sides.
Facilitated co-design workshops with each grantee; portfolio-wide indicator set.
- Implementation Planning Sprints
Turn approved proposals into credible delivery plans - activities, milestones, dependencies, risks - so grants actually produce the impact they were funded for.
2-day sprint per grantee; funder receives a signed-off implementation plan.
- Beneficiary Targeting Reviews
Sharpen who each grantee is actually reaching, and whether they are the right people to move the outcome the funder cares about.
Targeting review + segmentation refresh per grantee; portfolio reach map for the funder.
- Programme Design
For CSI heads designing new programmes: architecture, logic, delivery model and MEL - designed from the outcome backwards, not the activity forwards.
Design sprint with the CSI/foundation team; deliverable is a ready-to-fund programme design.
- Grantee Capacity Building
Structured capacity programme across the portfolio - the areas the funder keeps having to fix in-flight (governance, MEL, financial management, delivery discipline).
Cohort-based capacity programme; grantees attend, funder receives progress reports.
- Reporting Uplift
Reset the reporting relationship: templates, cadence and quality standards, plus coaching so grantees can actually meet them.
Reporting standards + template pack + 1:1 grantee coaching to lift quality within one cycle.