When Alexandra Sossa talks about the clients of the Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project (FLAP), she starts with those who harvest food, pack meat, remove snow, and keep restaurants running, yet often live in the shadows, afraid or unable to seek help. For nearly three decades, FLAP has stood by them, offering free legal aid, social services and support across Illinois.

By 2021, FLAP’s leaders saw that to expand their reach, they needed a new approach. As FLAP’s CEO/Bilingual Chief Executive Officer, Alexandra Sossa, put it: “We were working relentlessly, but it was getting harder to connect that work with results in the eyes of donors”. That’s when FLAP turned to Compass Pro Bono for an On Track funding strategy project. 

The Compass team anchored the project around a simple question: How do we turn FLAP’s powerful story into a reliable donor engine? 

Working with FLAP, the team first reframed the organization’s description of its client community from “undocumented low‑income workers” to “low‑wage workers,” connecting wages to working conditions and emphasizing workers’ economic contributions. The volunteers also encouraged FLAP to highlight the lived experiences of its staff and leaders: Alexandra’s childhood on a coffee farm, a community navigator’s decades in a restaurant without overtime pay, and team members whose families had once relied on the same support FLAP now provides. By surfacing these stories, funders and donors could see the authenticity behind the mission. The team also introduced the concept of “Return on Purpose,” giving FLAP a clearer way to show the human return on every dollar invested. Instead of speaking in broad terms, FLAP could point to specific outcomes like a worker gaining legal status, a mother avoiding homelessness, or a client recovering stolen wages. In practice, this gave FLAP a data-rich vocabulary that appealed to both compassion and accountability. By the end of the project, FLAP had a practical playbook for fundraising, a compelling story to tell, and new messaging frameworks and donor systems that positioned it for growth.

The results have been transformative. Since completing their On Track project, FLAP has grown from a team of four to fourteen. They have sharply increased their annual revenue and diversified their portfolio of foundations, expanding from 25 foundations to 120 foundations, including a major gift from MacKenzie Scott. FLAP also increased individual donors, multi-year funding grants, and has even been able to create an endowment.

Since working with Compass, FLAP has expanded both its services, now including employment and immigration law, eviction prevention, referrals to cannabis expungement attorneys,  financial assistance, and technology access, and its reach, growing from a local organization into one serving low-wage workers across Illinois. FLAP is now looking at national expansion. As Alexandra reflects on this journey, she’s clear: “If we didn’t have Compass, we would still be doing the work, but at a smaller scale. I don’t think we would be where we are right now.”