Angela Frusciante is an independent philanthropy partner who supports foundations and their grantees in maximizing their grantmaking and social change investments. As founder of Knowledge Designs to Change, Angela brings more than 25 years of social science research experience from across foundation, academic, nonprofit and community spaces. She is a full member of the National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers, a vetted member of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars, an alumna of the Council on Foundations Career Pathways program, and a long-term scholar contributor to The Foundation Review, the first peer-reviewed journal in philanthropy.

Angela provides both design and implementation services in supporting grantmaking organizations, program teams, and collaboratives in creating practices that center knowledge building as core to successful change efforts. Whether the opportunity at hand is a co-designed research project, professional training or knowledge certification, internal learning system development, or broader grantmaking, collaborative funding, and network learning processes, Angela uses a tested knowledge development approach to build both strategy and real time tools that align and adapt with philanthropic change goals and grantmaking approach.

Through partnership, advocacy, and field-building, Angela is committed to engaging with philanthropic colleagues who take on the important analytic work that connects funders, grantees, and communities through shared meaning making.

Angela, a first-generation college student, earned a Masters in Regional Planning, with a focus on community research, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She holds a Doctorate in Education Policy from the University of Maryland, College Park where her research concentrated on knowledge construction in philanthropic change efforts. She spent ten years in the Washington DC area working on various partnerships between foundations, university teams, and nonprofit/community groups.

Angela served as an academic faculty member and later became one of the first people to hold a “knowledge development officer” title within a grantmaking foundation. In this role, she created and managed grant and research investments related to information access, organizational learning, evaluation, management systems, program support, and network learning.  She established a family foundation’s statewide university partnerships and initiated an emerging network of engaged scholars. She continues statewide leadership as Chair of URBAN Connecticut, a regional affiliate of the Urban Research Based Action Network and heads up the national association’s “philanthropic intersections” efforts that highlight connections between grantmaking and engaged research.

Areas of Focus

• Developing and implementing targeted research projects
• Designing and facilitating foundation/university/community partnerships
• Crafting organizational, collaborative, and network learning processes
• Building internal knowledge systems, tools, and capacity
• Co-creating knowledge strategy and practices

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