We help mission-driven organizations raise money, reach audiences, and lead through pressure.
Main Street soul, K Street address. Pittsburgh-anchored, Southern-rooted, working with clients from the Lower Ninth Ward to Capitol Hill.
A social impact consulting firm working with nonprofits, funders, and social enterprises to grow audiences, raise money, shift narratives, and design durable strategies for lasting change. Clients come to us when the work is mission-driven, the pressure is real, and the margin for error is low.
Start a conversation →Here's what the work has produced.
Hover any number to see the context behind it. The work is measured in what changed for the people we serve, not in what we said about ourselves.
Quantitative signals from client work.
These figures reflect KMSG's role in communications, strategy, fundraising, convening, audience development, and executive advisory work. They do not claim client-owned program outcomes.
KMSG is a next-generation firm that is leading innovative and necessary reforms to the social impact sector. Its early success and profitability from day one are a successful case study and counter-narrative to the misguided notion that new businesses must choose between profit and social responsibility.
Five practices.
One accountable team.
Every project at KMSG is led by someone who has run their function somewhere else first. The Managing Director maintains direct oversight of every workstream, deliverable, and deadline. Hover a row to see recent work behind it.
We translate complex impact data into communications that move people. That includes narrative strategy, digital execution, media engagement, and the editorial work that makes a campaign coherent.
Recent workLed messaging and advocacy for Global Citizen campaigns reaching 10.5M people. Led communications strategy for NO MORE, the impact campaign for the Academy Award-nominated documentary The Alabama Solution.
We assess what's working across communications, fundraising, and organizational infrastructure, and what isn't. The deliverables are designed to be implemented the same week, not filed away.
Recent workCommunications assessments across the Tow Foundation grantee cohort. Recommendations rated 9.2 out of 10 for usefulness; 100% would recommend to peers.
Strategic and executive support at moments of real pressure: budget cuts, leadership transitions, reputational risk, board-level decisions.
Recent workLed communications response for the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium after a proposed elimination of state funding. Facilitated The Fortune Society's executive leadership retreat. Supported engagements with Members of Congress and senior public officials across advocacy campaigns.
We fill staffing gaps without disrupting continuity. That includes interim communications and development leadership, parental leave coverage, and structured hiring for key positions.
Recent workFractional communications leadership for Designing Justice + Designing Spaces during a transitional growth period and 10th anniversary campaign. Supported organizations receiving transformational philanthropic gifts through narrative, positioning, and funder engagement strategy.
We design and facilitate the convenings, cohorts, and capacity-building relationships that help grantmakers and grantees actually work together.
Recent workMulti-year grantee capacity-building cohort for The Tow Foundation, supporting 30+ grantee organizations and 55 partners through structured learning sessions; interim executive leadership included oversight of $30M in annual grantmaking.
Engagements that show how we operate.
NO MORE: The Alabama Solution Impact Campaign
A statewide film impact campaign for the Academy Award-nominated documentary The Alabama Solution, built to translate documentary attention into public pressure, policy visibility, and sustained narrative infrastructure around Alabama's prison crisis. The work connected film audiences, families, faith leaders, advocates, press, and cultural messengers, with amplification from Kim Kardashian, Jane Fonda, John Legend, and Mariska Hargitay, among others.
The Tow Foundation Grantee Cohort
A multi-year capacity-building partnership designing and delivering communications and fundraising support across more than 30 grantee organizations and 55 partner organizations. KMSG's Managing Director additionally served as Interim Chief of Staff to the Foundation, supervising the program team overseeing $30M in annual grantmaking.
The Luce Scholars Program Rollout
A digital marketing and audience-development engagement to support the Henry Luce Foundation's transition from a closed, invitation-based fellowship process to an open application. KMSG built the campaign and the targeting strategy across both 2022 and 2023 cohorts, with an explicit emphasis on historically-underserved student populations.
MPV Vaccine Communications
A crisis communications engagement supporting New York City's effort to get accurate MPV vaccine information to LGBTQIA+ communities after a difficult rollout. KMSG worked with trusted cultural messengers to share NYC Health-approved information and rebuild confidence in vaccine access.
Philanthropic Audience Targeting
A targeted philanthropic engagement strategy designed to help Fountain House reach the next wave of funders for serious mental illness reform. KMSG built a curated audience strategy and campaign approach for funder-facing messaging across LinkedIn and related digital channels.
Leading With Diplomacy Summit
A communications, logistics, and amplification engagement for Foreign Policy for America's national leadership summit. KMSG supported planning, publicizing, live engagement, post-event feedback analysis, and social media coordination across a high-level policy convening.
We have a point of view.
Most of what's broken in the social impact sector is broken at the level of structure, not effort.
The advisory complex around philanthropy gatekeeps access to capital it didn't earn. Trust-based giving works when funders actually trust grantees, and not when "trust" becomes another word for distance. We've made these arguments in our published work, and we make them in our client work, too.
Kindred Motes-Caso, Founder.
A first-generation college graduate from Somerville, Alabama, Kindred founded KM Strategies Group in 2021 after fifteen years inside the institutions the firm now serves. He chairs the ACLU of Alabama, sits on the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, and writes regularly on philanthropy and the South for Inside Philanthropy, Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Alliance Magazine.
A firm with a place, a position, and a record.
KM Strategies Group is an LGBTQ-owned social impact consulting firm, certified by the NGLCC and the Equality Chamber of DC. We're anchored in Pittsburgh, the largest city in Appalachia, and shaped by Southern roots. Our portfolio spans 18 countries (including six LMICs), and our leadership team is 100% first-generation college graduates and graduates of public schools and universities.
We reinvest 10% of profits each year into Southern and Appalachian organizations through The Etolia Fund, our grantmaking arm. To date, we've donated more than $150,000 to nonprofit movements working to make their communities better, stronger, and more vibrant places to live. In 2025, we launched the KMSG Research Fellowship with the University of Alabama and Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, building an equity-centered talent pipeline between Alabama and Western Pennsylvania.
Hover the marquee to pause.
We're ready when you are.
If you're building something that needs clarity, capital, traction, or the ability to move fast without losing direction, we'd like to hear about it. The first conversation is a thirty-minute call to understand the stakes and determine whether KMSG is the right partner.