Barrie · Simcoe County · Ontario

Strategic support
for nonprofits
ready to grow.

Growthway partners with nonprofits as an embedded strategic lead — helping EDs make better decisions, secure meaningful funding, and build the capacity to last.

2K+
Nonprofits operating
in Ontario facing capacity gaps
1 in 3
Nonprofit EDs report being
stretched beyond their capacity
ESL
External Strategic Lead —
the role most orgs need and few know exists
Embedded Strategic Lead Funding Architecture Grant Writing Stakeholder Partnerships Fundraising Campaigns Program Implementation Systems & Technology Brand & Communications Grant Intelligence Embedded Strategic Lead Funding Architecture Grant Writing Stakeholder Partnerships Fundraising Campaigns Program Implementation Systems & Technology Brand & Communications Grant Intelligence
What We Do

Not a consultant.
Not a coach.
Something better.

"The most important work doesn't happen in a report. It happens in the room, in the decisions, in the week-to-week."

Growthway operates as an External Strategic Lead — embedded inside your organization as a trusted partner who thinks alongside your leadership, not at it.

That means being in the room for the decisions that matter, asking the questions your board isn't asking, writing the grants that fund what you're actually building — and making sure your strategy and your funding are pointed in the same direction.

It's the kind of support that changes how an organization operates — not just how it looks on paper.

Growthway is
  • An embedded strategic partner inside your team
  • A thought partner for your ED and board leadership
  • A grant writer who understands your strategy first
  • A second voice on the decisions that carry real risk
  • A long-term relationship, not a one-off engagement
Growthway is not
  • A traditional consultant with a report and an invoice
  • A grant writer disconnected from your strategy
  • A coach without operational involvement
  • A program you apply to and wait to hear back from
Who It's For

Built for orgs
in motion.

Growthway works best with nonprofits at a pivotal moment — where the work is growing but the capacity to carry it hasn't caught up yet.

🌱

Orgs in growth mode

You're doing more, serving more, and the ED is wearing too many hats. You need someone to hold the strategy while leadership focuses on what only they can do.

🧭

New or transitioning EDs

You've stepped into a leadership role and need a trusted strategic partner in your corner — not a board watching over your shoulder, but someone genuinely on your side.

💡

Orgs pursuing funding seriously

You have programs worth funding but grants feel disconnected from your real work. Growthway bridges that gap — building the strategy that makes funding follow your vision.

Free Tool

How ready is your nonprofit for strategic growth?

Take the 3-minute Strategic Health Check. You'll get a personalized response from our team with one concrete observation about where your organization stands.

Take the Strategic Health Check
Our Services

Eight ways
we show up.

Every engagement draws on several of these at once — that's by design. The flagship is the Embedded Strategic Lead model. Everything else is a module within it, or a standalone engagement when that's the right fit.

★ Flagship Engagement

Embedded Strategic Lead

We embed directly into your leadership layer — attending board meetings, joining funder calls, and carrying the strategic coordination burden that prevents your ED from doing what only they can do. Every other service lives inside this model or runs as a standalone module.

Monthly retainer · Defined scope · No billable hours
02

Funding Architecture & Grant Writing

Map your full funding landscape, sequence applications strategically, and write submissions aligned with your actual strategy — not just the funder's criteria.

03

Stakeholder & Partnership Development

Identify, cultivate, and formalize relationships with funders, government bodies, and institutional partners — building structures that are durable, not personality-dependent.

04

Fundraising Campaign Design & Execution

Build donor campaigns from concept through close — prospect research, case for support, B2B outreach, and pipeline tracking. We implement, not just advise.

05

Program Implementation & Workforce Partnerships

Stand up programs involving Riipen, SWPP, co-op placements, and applied research. Few nonprofit strategists understand these operationally. We do.

06

Technology & Systems Implementation

CRM setup, grant and donor management, workflow automation, and digital infrastructure. We build systems your team owns long after we're gone.

07

Brand, Communications & Content Strategy

Organizational narrative, messaging architecture, social media strategy, and campaign content for orgs with a strong mission and a weak ability to communicate it.

08 · Proprietary

Funding Intelligence & Sector Research

We built a grant intelligence tool mapping every OTF and federal grant in Simcoe County since 2000 — giving clients a factual picture of their funding landscape from day one.

Full service details Start a conversation
How It Works

Four stages.
One direction.

Every engagement starts with understanding where you are and what you need — then builds from there.

01

Discovery Conversation

We start with an honest conversation about where your org is, what's working, what isn't, and what you're building toward. No pitch. No obligation.

02

Strategic Assessment

We map your organizational readiness — mission clarity, funding landscape, governance health, and capacity gaps — so we're both working from the same picture.

03

Embedded Partnership

Growthway joins your team as an External Strategic Lead — present in decisions, active in grant development, and aligned with your leadership week to week.

04

Momentum & Growth

As your org gains capacity and strategic clarity, Growthway scales with you — deepening the work or transitioning to new challenges as you're ready.

About

Built from inside
the sector.

Growthway was founded by Matt Parreira, a strategic operator who spent years working across Ontario's nonprofit and post-secondary ecosystem at organizations including eCampusOntario, Riipen, and Magnet at TMU.

What he kept seeing: nonprofit leaders with real vision and genuine community impact, stretched too thin, chasing grants that didn't quite fit, without anyone in their corner to help them think strategically.

Growthway exists to close that gap — not with programs and pitch nights, but with the kind of embedded, trusted strategic partnership that actually changes how an organization operates.

Based in Barrie, Ontario, Growthway primarily serves nonprofits across Simcoe County — with a genuine belief that regional organizations outside Toronto deserve the same quality of strategic support as those with access to big-city infrastructure.

eCampusOntarioStrategic partnership and program development across Ontario's post-secondary sector.
RiipenWork-integrated learning and stakeholder engagement at scale across Canadian institutions.
Magnet at TMUCommunity economic development, nonprofit partnerships, and labour market strategy.
Based in Barrie, OntarioServing Simcoe County and surrounding communities — embedded in the region, not parachuting in.
Currently accepting clientsA small number of nonprofit partnerships for spring 2026. Reach out to start a conversation.
Grant Intelligence

We mapped $47M
in Simcoe County
grants.

Every OTF and federal grant awarded to Simcoe County nonprofits since 2000 — searchable, filterable, and publicly verified. We built this to understand the funding landscape we operate in. Now it's available for anyone in the sector to use.

983
OTF grants to Simcoe County organizations — all years
$47M
Total awarded — verified from public OTF records
The RCF Cliff
$13.1M in capacity grants.
131 organizations. All closed.

The Resilient Communities Fund peaked in 2021 and is now fully expired across Simcoe County — with no OTF successor programme for capacity building. This is the gap Growthway was built for.

131
RCF grants
now closed
2021
Peak funding
year in region
0
OTF capacity
successors
Get in Touch

Let's talk about
where you're headed.

No pitch. No commitment. If your org is at a moment where strategic support would make a real difference, the best place to start is a conversation.

📍
Barrie, Ontario · Simcoe County