Moses Taylor Foundation’s Nonprofit Effectiveness Focus Area seeks to ensure that nonprofit organizations in Northeastern Pennsylvania are effective, resilient, and well-resourced. For more than three years, a key piece of pursuing this goal has been a partnership with Catchafire, an online platform that helps foundations go beyond grant dollars and drive community support.
Through Catchafire, the Foundation provides grantees with free access to skilled professionals who volunteer their time and expertise to support nonprofits. This assistance includes work on specific projects ranging from logo design and document translation to strategic planning and database configuration.
Additionally, training and expert one-on-one advisory calls are available through the site.
From the Foundation’s perspective, Catchafire makes it easy to quantify the impact of this partnership through its funder partner dashboard. Since the Foundation started working with Catchafire in September 2022 through August 2025, Catchafire calculates that 47 local nonprofits have benefited from more than 3,850 hours of donated support via the site, saving the community an estimated $811,000 in costs. Catchafire also conducts regular surveys of partner nonprofits, and the platform currently holds a local satisfaction rating of 4.7 out of 5 among the Moses Taylor Foundation cohort.
In addition to collecting data through Catchafire, Foundation staff regularly seek informal feedback from organizations to learn how they are using the site and whether they find it valuable. So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
“The Cancer Institute used Catchafire for a variety of projects with very positive results. The biggest project was working with a Catchafire volunteer to do a major update on the organization’s Employee Policy and Procedure Handbook. The volunteer had extensive experience in human resources and helped structure the undertaking in such a way that was efficient and effective without being onerous for staff,” said Laura Toole, Executive Vice President of the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute (NRCI).
Catchafire is particularly impactful for smaller nonprofit organizations. For example, Supporting Area Families Everyday (SAFE), a Foundation grantee that provides safe custody exchanges and supervised visitation in Bradford and Susquehanna counties, has utilized Catchafire for a total of 12 projects and calls to date, saving the organization nearly $28,000, according to Catchafire’s estimates. This significant savings has had a big impact on the organization.
“SAFE worked with Catchafire on several projects that have made a difference for us. They helped update our logo, edit short videos, and create eye-catching graphics. These efforts greatly increased awareness of our organization. The video editing and graphic design work, in particular, have been incredibly useful, allowing us to share our mission and connect with our community,” said Heather McNett, Executive Director of SAFE.
