Seven nights at the Café. One piece of your business or nonprofit built each night, in the room, with a drink in your hand.
Come to one, come to all seven. The Brainstorm Bar is open for drop-ins 5 PM to 10 PM all week.
Every seat comes with a latte or a mocktail.
These are working sessions, not lectures. You show up with what you're building, you leave with a piece of it finished. The Brainstorm Bar stays open after every session, so the conversation keeps going once the formal part ends.
Tick the sessions you want. Your total updates as you go, and you check out once at the end. There is no requirement to take them in order, though the week is built to run start to finish.
What are you building, for whom, and why you?
We start at the end and work backwards. What outcome are you actually after, who is it for, and what has to be true before it can happen? Most people can describe their idea and cannot describe their model. By the end of the night you can do both, out loud, without hedging.
You leave withOne page describing your model in plain language, and the three assumptions underneath it that you'll need to test.
Make it real on paper: LLC vs. nonprofit, EIN, 501(c)(3) basics.
The decision most people postpone for a year and then regret. What actually separates an LLC from a nonprofit, when fiscal sponsorship beats filing your own 501(c)(3), what an EIN does, and the real order of the paperwork. Plain English, no jargon, and honest about what each choice costs you later.
You leave withA decision on your structure, the filing sequence written down, and a list of what you can do yourself versus what needs a professional.
Know your numbers before anyone asks for them.
We calculate your price floor live: what the work has to earn, what you can realistically deliver, and the number those two facts require. Then we build a first budget in a form a funder or a bank would actually accept. Bring last year's figures if you have them. Rough is fine.
You leave withYour price floor, the arithmetic behind it, and a one-page budget you can send to someone without apologizing for it.
How people find you and why they trust you.
Your name, your one line, and the thirty seconds you say when someone asks what you do. We work on the spoken version and the written version, because they are not the same, and most people only ever build one. Bring your website or your Instagram if you have one and we will look at it together.
You leave withA one-line description, a thirty-second version you have said out loud to a real person, and a short list of what to fix first on your page.
Intake forms, scheduling, payments, and simple automations.
The most hands-on night of the week. We build the operational spine while you are in the room: an intake form, a booking link, a way to take payment, and one automation that connects them so you stop re-typing the same information. We also talk honestly about where AI helps and where it just adds a step.
You leave withA working intake form and booking link that are live, not a to-do list about setting them up someday.
The full funding landscape: grants, sponsors, earned revenue, loans.
The whole map, honestly. Which money is worth chasing at your stage and which is a distraction dressed as an opportunity. Grants, corporate sponsorship, earned revenue, loans, and what each one actually costs you in time, reporting, and control. Ends with community time, because the person sitting next to you is part of the point.
You leave withA shortlist of the two or three funding paths that fit where you actually are, and the reason the others can wait.
Write it, review it, submit it before you leave the room.
The one session where you don't plan to apply, you apply. We work a live opportunity end to end: the narrative, the budget, the attachments, and the submission itself, with help beside you the whole way. Capped much smaller than the rest of the week so everyone gets read.
You leave withA submitted application, a reviewed set of materials you can reuse, and one follow-up on your next application after the week ends.
Seats are limited at each session so the room stays small enough to actually work in.
Caffeine & Capital moves you through the whole map in a week. What a group session cannot do is sit with your specific situation for as long as it takes. That is what the 1:1 work is for, and everyone starts in the same place.
An hour built entirely around your situation, plus a written one-page runway inside 48 hours. You get the runway whether or not you go further.
You know what's broken and you need a strategist in the room to help you fix it and move on. Written notes and next actions within 24 hours of each session.
Async support between sessions, drafted deliverables you keep, document review, a written mid-point review, and a 30-day check-in after we finish.
Every coaching engagement starts with the Roadmap Session. Nobody buys a package without having sat with me first.
Come build the parts of it that have been sitting in a note on your phone. Bring the idea, take the seat, and let the rest of the room work on it with you.
Questions? info@thrivephilly.org