On our website, we list all development companies that fund our work.
Development companies can fund Catalyze SV's work in two ways:
1. Hire Catalyze SV to assist with community engagement and
2. Sponsor our annual Catalyzing Change Awards held in the late fall.
We share with all development companies that contribute funds to CSV the following disclaimer:
While we now accept these funding sources to finance and grow our increasingly impactful work, we do not make any major or minor decisions based on any funds received from development companies. We urge developers to keep any discussions or decisions about funding our work 100% separate from discussions or decisions about the work itself. We share this disclaimer with every development company that contributes funds to us. Our North Star will always be what is true to our mission and best for the community.
We will reevaluate all aspects of this policy in December 2025 to ensure it is working ethically for our organization and is achieving our org’s big-picture goals.
To ensure the ethical implementation of this policy, we will erect structured walls between our advocacy and fundraising work with development companies:
a) The team member who oversees our project advocacy work – our Manager of Development Projects will not be involved in interfacing with developers about funding our work.
b) Donations for the Catalyzing Change Awards will be handled by our Fundraising Associate.
c) Contracting for our community engagement services will be handled by our Community Engagement Manager.
d) If a developer brings a project to CSV for scoring, CSV won’t accept a donation from a developer 60 days before or after our members score the project. CSV and its members won’t evaluate development projects within 6 months of completing any fee-for-service work for any entity involved in that development project. If we do evaluate such a project, we will refrain from scoring the “Community” category of the scorecard because we’ll have been involved in the community engagement for it.