Upswell is the community-building hub of Independent Sector’s work to bring together and catalyze the charitable sector. Programming includes new monthly virtual sessions, as well as a more comprehensive annual Upswell Summit. This engagement is threaded through the larger work of IS, and can be leveraged by sponsors as well, based on interest and alignment.

Upswell is about co-creation. It’s where ideas and solutions from across civil society are elevated into the national conversation. The focus of Upswell is giving changemakers a forum to share ideas, develop and refine solutions to challenges, and connect with allies – and then take what they have learned to make their own work more impactful and community-focused. Our content is sourced from and curated by our network, including sector thought leaders, partners and members. We welcome the opportunity to co-create content with you, leveraging your knowledge and distinct perspective.

Upswell is about building a community of diverse changemakers from across the sector, and those deeply linked to the sector. 82% of participants are decision makers for their organization – head of their organization, senior leader, or department lead. Nonprofit and philanthropic leaders, community-based activists, social entrepreneurs, as well as mission-driven government and business leaders, come together in Upswell monthly events and our annual Summit, to learn, share, connect, re-charge, and consider new and innovative ways to create positive change for all communities.

Upswell spans issue-areas and perspectives and builds bridges between the charitable sector and its partners in government and business. It does this to bring the leading edge of impact and innovation into clear focus. To that end, we have organized our experiences along four primary dimensions that drive impact, bringing together locally grounded and nationally relevant issues:

• Acceleration – Learn best practices, strengthen your skills, and discover how to be a more effective changemaker. Think of this as high-impact capacity building
• Innovation – Explore the leading edge of doing good, with powerful new data, experimental technology, and moonshot ideas about changing the status quo.
• Collaboration – Build bridges across differences, brainstorm with influential leaders, and forge new cross-sector relationships. Your light bulb moment might only be a conversation away.
• Resilience –Harness the insights gained during the pandemic to strengthen our communities, organizations, staff, and leaders – and prepare for the immediate and unexpected tasks ahead.

We encourage our partners to work with us to not only bring equity issues to the forefront, but directly support your work to enable authentic conversations – inclusive and diverse in race, gender, experience, mission, geography, and budget, among other important dimensions. To build cohesion and a community that reflects the diversity of the sector, we seek to broaden our reach and elevate new voices through a pay it forward or gift-subscription membership model. Partners are invited to support a year-long gift membership for the impact partners in their portfolio – helping Independent Sector to engage new voices but also supporting your investments by strengthening the sector and giving them access to sector-level content. Your impact portfolio partners will receive access to knowledge sharing, networking, and exposure to share the insights and experiences of all changemakers.  Please consider including these programs in your partnership framework.

We realize true community cannot be confined to a gathering or an experience, but needs an organic, ongoing means to engage, sense and respond. Our vision for Upswell includes live experiences and online tools and resources; serving up thought leadership and creating a marketplace for networking and problem-solving; a means of listening as well as being heard. We continue to build this technology platform as a means of maximizing the potential for engagement and scale. 

In addition to any partner’s specific support of content, experiences or gift memberships, all Upswell partners provide general support for our ongoing work with this community of changemakers from across the sector. Your support is essential to our ability to provide information, analysis, and collective action on behalf of the sector as a whole.