--- title: "How to Run a Funding Concentration Stress Test | CGC | Common Ground Consulting" description: "A two-hour exercise for leadership teams: list your real revenue sources, score them for political exposure, and find out what happens when one disappears." lang: en json-ld: | [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BlogPosting", "headline": "How to Run a Funding Concentration Stress Test", "description": "A two-hour exercise for leadership teams: list your real revenue sources, score them for political exposure, and find out what happens when one disappears.", "image": [ "https://vonqfnmlbhjkmhstimpk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/1787182493581-8ga9pi.png" ], "datePublished": "2026-08-20T04:00:00+00:00", "dateModified": "2026-08-20T11:39:56.471777+00:00", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Craig Bowman" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Common Ground Consulting", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://commongroundconsulting.ai/og-social-20260515.png" } }, "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://commongroundconsulting.ai/blog/how-to-run-a-funding-concentration-stress-test" }, "keywords": "Philanthropy, Strategy, Leadership, Consulting, Sector Insights" }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://commongroundconsulting.ai/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Blog", "item": "https://commongroundconsulting.ai/blog" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "How to Run a Funding Concentration Stress Test" } ] } ] --- [![Common Ground Consulting logo: stylized circular emblem with the firm's name, linking to the homepage](/assets/commonground-logo-white-RKdLhTAB.png)](/) [Home](/)[About](/about#company-metrics)[Partnership](/strategic-implementation-partnership)[Cases](/case-studies)[Clients](/clients)[Blog](/blog) - About - Services - Interventions - Resources Search Search 1. [Home ](/) 2. [Blog ](/blog) 3. How to Run a Funding Concentration Stress Test [](/rss.xml) Philanthropy · Strategy · Leadership · Consulting · Sector Insights # How to Run a Funding Concentration Stress Test By Craig Bowman August 20, 20264 min read Share: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommongroundconsulting.ai%2Fblog%2Fhow-to-run-a-funding-concentration-stress-test)Copy link ![How to Run a Funding Concentration Stress Test](https://vonqfnmlbhjkmhstimpk.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/1787182493581-8ga9pi.png) _USAID went from permanent to gone within a year. Here is a two-hour exercise that shows how exposed your organization is._ > USAID was never abolished. Congress never repealed the statute that created it. On July 1, 2025, it stopped implementing foreign assistance and its surviving functions moved to the State Department. U.S. foreign aid disbursements fell to $47.3 billion in fiscal 2025 from $73.5 billion the year before, the lowest level in inflation-adjusted terms since 2004. The organizations that depended on that money did not get a transition plan, and many of them were extremely well run. Being well run was never the variable. Concentration was. And concentration is measurable, which means you can find out where your organization stands in an afternoon rather than finding out the way they did. Here is the exercise we run with leadership teams. Give it two hours, a whiteboard, and permission to be blunt in front of each other. **Step 1: List every revenue source above five percent** Not categories. Sources. “Government grants” is a category; this agency, this program, this appropriation is a source. “Foundations” is a category; this foundation, this program officer, this three-year commitment now in year two is a source. Most organizations discover at this step that what they have been calling a diversified portfolio is four relationships wearing eight names. Two federal grants administered by the same agency are one risk. Three foundation grants championed by the same program officer who is rumored to be leaving are one risk. **Step 2: Score each source for political exposure** For every line, answer one question. Could this disappear because of a decision nobody at our organization influences or even hears about? A federal appropriation scores high. A state contract in a budget year scores high. A foundation with an announced spend-down deadline scores high, because the end date is already set. A corporate partnership tied to one executive scores high. Ten thousand individual donors score low, because 10,000 people do not change their minds in the same quarter. This is the step that reframes the room. Leaders who believed they were diversified across funder types often find they are concentrated in a single kind of risk, which is the kind of diversification that offers no protection at all. **Step 3: Kill your largest source and keep going** Take the biggest number on the board and set it to zero, effective in 90 days. No wind-down, no partial award, no transition period. Then work through it out loud, in the room. Which programs stop. Which staff you lose, by name, because that is how it will actually happen. How many months of unrestricted reserve stand between the notice and insolvency. Which community partners find out from you and which find out from the news. Who calls the families. Then do it again with the second largest source. The second run is usually the more instructive of the two, because the first produces shock and the second produces thinking. **Step 4: Write down what would have helped** At the end of both scenarios, ask a single question. What do we wish we had started building three years ago? The answers are always some version of the same list. Unrestricted reserves. A broader base of individual donors who answer to nobody but themselves. A funder relationship in a completely different sector. A program model that can run at 60 percent scale instead of collapsing below a threshold. A board that already understands the risk, so the conversation in the crisis is about action rather than about orientation. That list is your strategic plan. Not the document in the drawer. The one you just made, in two hours, with the people who would have to execute it. **What to do with the result** Bring the exercise to your board rather than the summary of it. Boards absorb this differently when they watch the numbers go to zero in real time than when they read a risk register with a yellow square next to it. Then pick one item from step four and fund it this year, at whatever size you can afford. Not the whole list. One item, actually funded, beats a comprehensive plan nobody resources. The organizations still standing after a funding shock are rarely the ones that predicted it. Nobody predicted the timing of USAID. They are the ones that had already started building the alternative before they needed it to work. _This post is the practical companion to Issue #4 of The Social Prophet, on what the end of USAID means and why domestic organizations are in the same structural position. Read it at_ [_thesocialprophet.org_](http://thesocialprophet.org)_._ _Common Ground Consulting works with nonprofit and NGO leaders on funding strategy, scenario planning, and organizational resilience. If you want an outside facilitator for this exercise, get in touch._ Share: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommongroundconsulting.ai%2Fblog%2Fhow-to-run-a-funding-concentration-stress-test)Copy link ## Strategic Intelligence for the Social Profit Sector The Social Prophet is our founder's independent monthly newsletter. Honest analysis of where the sector is headed, backed by evidence. ![The Social Prophet logo](/assets/social-prophet-logo-B4M5vO4w.png)[Subscribe at thesocialprophet.org](https://thesocialprophet.org) [← Back to all articles](/blog) ### Contact [+1 202 744 2567](https://wa.me/12027442567) [info@commongroundconsulting.org]() Global Reach. 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