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Looking for Growth Capital, Strategic Partners & Program Sponsors

A deliberate, small conversation: seed capital, strategic partners, and program sponsors who can help ToyBox sustain the current practice and thoughtfully build the next stage.

ToyBox Consulting & Management is opening the door to a small, deliberate conversation: with people who could help ToyBox sustain the current practice and, over time, seed the next stage of growth. This post is the invitation.

The state of the firm

ToyBox is a solo-founder practice with a small Strategic Partner Network. Twenty-plus years of cross-sector work. Ten City of Seattle Consultant Roster placements. Three active WA State Commerce appointments. Two active certifications (CompTIA Project+, Intuit QBO), a third in progress (AIS Management Certificate). Four active board seats. A published research credential in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. 1st Runner-Up for Best Community Leader in the 2026 Seattle Medium's Best of the Best Northwest.

The Partner Network today: Christopher Perry (IT & Data Strategy — director-level expertise in IT governance and public-sector analytics) and Erik "Kalligraphy" Wilson (Creative Director & Media Producer; Co-Founder of Converge Media). Both engaged as as-needed subcontractors when the work calls for it. ToyBox retains PM authority on every engagement.

Track record supporting the ask: $12M COO seat at Community Passageways (2022–2025, 80+ staff, 14 departments, third-party Archbright HR audit confirming systems integrity). $148,560 BELOVED Campaign (dual-government contract with City of Seattle + King County DPH, 50+ creative workers managed). Black Brilliance Research Project (KCEN Project Manager coordinating 100+ community researchers; final 1,300-page report informed Seattle's $30M participatory budgeting process).

The near-term goal

Not scale-to-firm. Not a bench of ten operators. That is the five-year growth plan — the direction of travel — but it is further ahead than today.

Today: sustain the practice and seed the next stage. Keep the current engagements healthy. Build the operational scaffolding so that the founder is not the single point of failure. Formalize the partner network. Add administrative support. Position ToyBox to accept and deliver on the roster task orders as they arrive. That is the honest, present-day version of the ask.

What we're looking for

Three categories. Non-exclusive. If any of these describe you, the door is open.

Seed capital

Modest capital to fund the sustain-and-seed stage: administrative support, formalized partner engagements, operational tooling, and the runway to hold roster-driven task orders as they come in. Structure of the investment is deliberately open — a first conversation is a chance to define the right shape together, not to pitch a pre-set instrument. This is not a Series A or a growth-stage round. It is a seed-stage conversation with people who invest in service businesses, minority-owned firms, or Pacific Northwest small business.

Strategic partners & advisors

People who can open doors, refer engagements, or lend judgment. Especially: former COOs and executive directors who have scaled service organizations from single-founder to multi-operator. Attorneys, CPAs, and financial advisors whose clients regularly need what ToyBox delivers. Board veterans across nonprofit and public-sector work.

Program sponsors

Golden Hour Unboxed (August 23, 2026, Bellevue Botanical Garden) is actively seeking sponsors. Future programs will as well. Sponsorship is aligned with Black entrepreneurship, cross-sector leadership development, and the visibility of small business in the Pacific Northwest economy. Sponsor packages available on request.

What you get in return

The specifics vary by partnership type — capital gets a defined return or equity structure to be shaped together, strategic partners get referral relationships, sponsors get named visibility across a growing convening series. The five-year plan and the current-year focus are available under NDA on request.

Who this post isn't for

To keep the conversation efficient — this open door is not for vendors pitching services to ToyBox (please use the contact form), not for aspiring consultants asking for jobs (formal recruitment will happen as the firm grows; watch this blog), and not for individual product-service pitches unrelated to the growth plan.

Starting the conversation

Email katoya@toyboxconsulting.net with PARTNER in the subject line. Tell me which of the three categories you fit and what you would want the first conversation to cover. Investor inquiries by email are welcome — no formal pitch deck required at first outreach.

Or schedule directly: calendly.com/toyboxcm/discovery-call/30 — 30 minutes, no obligation.

If we already know each other and this post gave you the language to name what you have been meaning to bring up — reach out directly. You know how to find me.