Carrying a Legacy Forward

“The start of [2025] was pretty intense for nonprofit organizations focused on economic and racial justice. It’s easy, a year out, to have forgotten that there was uncertainty that organizations like GRO would even continue to exist, much less be able to expand our work.”

That’s how Hope Wollensack, Founding Executive Director of The Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund, grounded us in a recent conversation. The reminder rang true. Eighteen months ago, things were incredibly precarious for social impact organizations across the country, including many in the New Profit portfolio. Much of our work in 2025 was devoted to supporting portfolio organizations as they navigated an uncertain path forward, including advanced disbursements to 14 organizations to cover short-term funding gaps.

So how did organizations like the GRO Fund, and leaders like Hope, navigate this challenging season? How did GRO Fund not only endure, but launch two new programs and double down on serving their community? We sat down with Hope and her New Profit Deal Partner, Hassan Hassan, to find out.

Hope, tell us a bit about yourself. How’d you come to lead GRO Fund?

HOPE: I started as a teacher and an assistant principal in New Orleans. It was amazing to be working with young people, but you would see the ways in which systems and institutions made it so that they were being asked to grapple with centuries of disadvantage that had preceded them. While it was tremendous that many of them were able to achieve despite those odds, I was always curious: what could we do to fundamentally change those odds?

So I went to graduate school for public policy, then came to Georgia, where I became politically involved through the Stacey Abrams campaign, then got connected with city council member Amir Farokhi, starting this initiative looking at the root causes of economic insecurity and wealth inequality in Atlanta.

That task force recommended solutions [with] an eye towards a guaranteed income program and a baby bonds program. Over the next year, we were able to develop partnerships and fundraise to make our first program In Her Hands happen, and we’ve been off and running ever since.

HASSAN: What stood out to me about GRO was that it came out of a community-rooted effort that is connected to local government to address a deeply entrenched systemic problem in a way that was grounded in the needs, history, and possibility of the region.

HOPE: Atlanta has the lowest economic mobility of any major city in the United States. The racial wealth gap here between white and black households is 46 to one. That is as wide as it was nationally when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. So there’s some pretty distinct challenges within this city that are actually a deeper indication of challenges across the South and across the country.

“ The racial wealth gap in Atlanta between white and black households is as wide as it was nationally when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

HASSAN: What impressed me was that GRO had already done the hard coalition-building work. They raised the capital upfront to launch the largest guaranteed income pilot in the South, while also advancing baby bonds advocacy in Georgia. That combination of direct support for families now and policy imagination for the future felt really powerful.

So what was happening with GRO Fund when you joined the New Profit portfolio?

HOPE: We connected with New Profit in year three of our organization, at a really critical juncture. Will we continue to do guaranteed income work focused on women, or do we have the capacity and the vision to branch out and do other types of work that are connecting both the income side and asset wealth building side of the equation? We were able to bring [those] together with New Profit’s support, to bring to life the solution that integrates those two conversations.

HASSAN: In one of my earliest one-on-one meetings with Hope, I asked her to name every worry she was carrying, and I just listened. Twenty minutes later, we had an inventory of risks we could actually organize, prioritize, and act on. That is often the most useful starting point: taking what feels sprawling and turning it into something a team can hold together.

HOPE: New Profit had a session on categorizing your dimensions of uncertainty. I attended with two other folks on the GRO leadership team, which [helped us] build our common understanding and language around uncertainty. I also expressed concern in my follow up meeting with Hassan that scenario planning can just be sprawling. How can we set up some reasonable bounds? He was really responsive to that and introduced a matrix table. So now this isn’t scenario planning that is 50 hours of my time; this is 10 to 20 hours of my time, which makes a world of a difference in my life.

HASSAN: Scenario planning helped Hope and her team move from anxiety to readiness. We were not only asking, “What if things get worse?” We were also asking, “What if things go better than expected? What if the regulatory environment improves? What if new capital comes in?” Hope and her finance lead turned that into a practical tool that connected each scenario to budget, staffing, and expenses. So when they went to the board, they were not just presenting a budget; they were presenting a set of decisions they were prepared to make under different conditions.

HOPE: It gave me confidence, too, as I’m talking with the team, taking feedback, knowing we don’t have to keep modeling every possible scenario. If it loosely fits in one of these nine boxes, then you know it’s sufficiently covered.

You two are describing a pretty in-depth, collaborative process, which is a huge part of why New Profit leans on this model of a dedicated New Profit Deal Partner for each organization in our portfolio. Hope, what did you expect when you first learned you’d be working with a Deal Partner, and for both of you, how has this working relationship developed?

HOPE: I wasn’t sure what to expect. The Deal Partner component seemed exciting and promising. And you just never really know what that could entail, whether it would be something that would help to accelerate the work, or whether it might be something that might create a little bit more work, even if unintentionally. I’ve been really excited that it has accelerated the work, by leaps and bounds, and I’ve learned so much from Hassan, even just in the past 15 months or so.

HASSAN: Before my first call with Hope, I was thinking about what she might be wondering: Is this going to be helpful? Is it going to create more work? What does it mean to bring New Profit into a four-year governance relationship? I wanted her to know that GRO was already in the portfolio — and now she should interview me, too.

“ If I had to boil my Deal Partner philosophy down to two words, it would be: be useful.

If I had to boil my Deal Partner philosophy down to two words, it would be: be useful. And to be useful, I have to first understand. Where is the CEO stuck? Where is the board stuck? Where is there energy for progress, but not enough capacity to move it? The work starts there.

What do you think makes your working relationship successful?

HOPE: Hassan really built trust, asked really authentic questions, created meeting spaces where we could actually be thinking strategically. He had really practical suggestions. He was willing to roll up his sleeves. Sometimes it’s just a matter of [having] someone who has the time and experience who’s going to be able to help you move the thing forward.

HASSAN: New Profit’s approach is distinctive because we are actively engaged without being prescriptive. As Deal Partners, we bring perspective, questions, and resources — but we are not coming in with a New Profit agenda. The work is to understand the CEO’s vision, understand where the board wants the organization to go, and then help move that direction forward.

A relatively unique aspect of New Profit’s Deal Partner model is that every Deal Partner sits on the board of the portfolio organization they work with. What’s it like to have a New Profit Deal Partner sit on your board?

HOPE: Hassan brings a lot of board management experience, so he’s able to help to give guidance and perspective there. He’s willing to help move something forward that may have been sitting for a long time. Most of my board are nonprofit executive directors themselves, so there’s always a real capacity question.

HASSAN: We ask a lot of nonprofit boards: taking on governance authority, fiduciary responsibility, and real liability. But, unlike in the private sector, most board members are volunteers and many have demanding full-time jobs, so even when they have expertise and relationships, they often do not have the time or structure to move governance work forward. I wanted Hope and the board to know that part of my role was to bring dedicated capacity, not just advice.

“ My role was to bring dedicated capacity, not just advice.

I think there is a real craft to being a strong board member. Every nonprofit is required to have a board; that body has tremendous power and responsibility. Helping board members understand the role, use their time well, and be set up for success is a meaningful mission to me.

HOPE: Hassan definitely helps us to think about our work in a bigger context. So many of us are focused on Atlanta or the Southeast. Hassan brings a national perspective that is helping us in a very healthy way, to think bigger about our work and also to ground us in what’s happening across the field and where we’re falling within that.

It’s inspiring to hear how the GRO Fund has come through an uncertain period even stronger. You launched the first accelerated Baby Bonds program in the United States, built a rapid-response cash program, and built policy infrastructure, just in 2025 alone, and you’ve only built momentum this year as you head into your five-year anniversary. What does this moment in the organization’s history mean to you, and what do you see coming next?

HOPE: GRO is marking its fifth anniversary at a powerful point of inflection, channeling our momentum into a bold new strategy and recruiting new board leadership. Our work is rooted in doing good for people now and creating new models of what’s possible for the immediate future. So often, our policy is limited by what we believe is within the realm of reason, and we lack bold imagination. Our model is to bring promising policy ideas to life, so that policymakers and the field can see their impact and consider how cash and capital solutions can support the agency and opportunity of the communities they serve.

HASSAN: Hope is an extraordinary CEO because she holds both rigor and imagination. From the moment we read GRO’s application, what stood out was her commitment to research, evidence, and learning; and her belief that pilots should not only serve people immediately, but also reshape policy and what we believe is possible.

HOPE: Over the past four years we’ve distributed a little over 25 million dollars to women and their kids experiencing some of the deepest poverty in our country. I’m really proud that we get to be a part of this long history of good troublemakers who’ve been advocating for these solutions, and we’ve got to do that with our community.

It has not just been a program for people, but it has been a program really developed with people, listening to what they need and honoring their choice, agency, and dignity throughout the program design process.

“ It has not just been a program for people, but it has been a program really developed with people, listening to what they need and honoring their choice, agency, and dignity throughout the program design process.

HASSAN: Hope always grounds this work in history. She reminds us that guaranteed income is not a new idea; it has a long lineage, including in the freedom struggles and economic justice work of the South.

HOPE: Guaranteed income as a concept was something Dr. Martin Luther King was an early advocate of, and our first program site was in his childhood neighborhood. The Old Fourth Ward is where Dr. King was born, where he pastored Ebenezer Baptist Church, and it’s where he and Coretta Scott King are buried today, where the King monuments are. And that neighborhood is home to the largest concentration of Section Eight housing in the southeast, right next to 100 million dollar developments. It is a microcosm of how unequal this city is. And quite literally, Dr. King and Ms. Coretta Scott King’s legacy is sitting right there.

HASSAN: The South is not only where some of our country’s deepest inequities have taken root; it is also where the seeds of the solutions have long been planted. That is why it feels powerful and appropriate for Georgia — and for leaders like Hope and her peers across the movement — to help lead this work forward.

“ The South is not only where some of our country’s deepest inequities have taken root; it is also where the seeds of the solutions have long been planted.

HOPE: Things are getting harder for families, not easier. It feels like the American Dream is further and further out of reach, to the extent that it ever was in reach for all communities at any point in our history.

We want to make sure that even if government chose to do nothing, we would show up and we would be serving people, designing cash and capital solutions that can move the needle on families’ abilities to live, survive, and thrive. On the other side, we want to ensure that the benefits of our program are not contained to the few people who are selected. We’re proud that we’ve served almost 1,000 folks across Georgia, and it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the scope and scale of the issue. We want to lead toward solutions that can serve everyone who is in need.

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