Project Sanctuary, Why Collaboration Beats Competition in the Nonprofit World

Most nonprofits are taught to think of every other organization in their space as competition for the same limited pool of donors. Heather Ray, founder and CEO of Project Sanctuary, and her colleague Catherine Ganley say that mindset is exactly backwards, and it may be one reason so many organizations struggle to grow past their first few years. On a recent episode of the Charity Charge Show, they explained how a collaboration-first approach, paired with a genuinely specific niche, has kept Project Sanctuary operating for close to 20 years.

Project Sanctuary provides therapeutic retreats and up to two years of follow-on support for military, veteran, and first responder families, treating the whole family unit rather than just the service member. Ray started the organization after recognizing that veterans returning home were getting help while their families were not, leaving a gap that no other organization at the time was filling.

Quick Summary

• Project Sanctuary, a nonprofit serving military and first responder families, has stayed active for nearly two decades by treating peer nonprofits as collaborators, not competitors.
• The organization refers families to other nonprofits when a different program is a better fit, and receives referrals in return, a two-way trust relationship that Heather Ray says strengthens outcomes for every organization involved.
• Owning a retreat center let Project Sanctuary open a new, diversified revenue stream: renting the space to other nonprofits at a discount.
• A Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children’s Mental Health grant funded a dedicated teen program, support Heather Ray says has become harder to find as some funders shift away from military and veteran causes.

Why treating other nonprofits as collaborators, not competitors, strengthens your outcomes

Project Sanctuary’s core philosophy is that there’s enough need, and enough donor support, for organizations to work together rather than compete. “We come from a place of abundance,” Ray said. “We believe that there’s enough resources out there for all of us if we all play well together.”

In practice, that means referring a family in crisis to Project Sanctuary first when appropriate, or sending them onward to a program built specifically for caregivers, spouses, or another specialized need once a family has been through Project Sanctuary’s retreat. Ray said this improves impact metrics for every organization involved, because each one is working with a family at the point where its specific program can help most.

The referral relationship also builds something harder to manufacture: trust. Families who’ve been through a Project Sanctuary retreat are more likely to follow through on a referral to another organization, because the recommendation comes from a program they already trust. For a development or program team evaluating potential partner organizations, this suggests collaboration isn’t just a values statement, it’s a retention and outcomes strategy.

Why finding a genuinely underserved niche matters more than differentiation for its own sake

Ray’s advice to new nonprofit founders starts before day one: figure out whether anyone else is already doing what you’re planning to do, and if they are, find the specific angle where you can do it differently or better. Project Sanctuary’s niche wasn’t just “veteran support,” a crowded space, it was whole-family support, something Ray found nobody else was offering when she searched.

That distinction matters because a crowded cause area with an unmet specific need still has room for a new organization, while a genuinely saturated niche usually doesn’t. Catherine Ganley described the retreat model’s specific differentiators: licensed professional counselors, social workers, and certified recreational therapists on staff, plus two years of continued family services after the retreat ends, a level of follow-through Ray said sets the organization apart from typical short-term programs.

Why a diversified, less grant-dependent funding mix matters for stability

Project Sanctuary has historically leaned heavily on grant funding, and Ray said the organization has deliberately worked to diversify away from that dependence. A recent development hire focused specifically on growing individual donor relationships, and major donor events have become a stronger part of the funding mix. The goal, Ray said, is straightforward: “make sure that we don’t have all of our eggs in one basket,” so that one funder pulling back doesn’t put the organization at risk.

Owning its own retreat center added a new kind of revenue entirely. Rather than keeping the facility exclusively for its own retreats, Project Sanctuary now rents it to other nonprofits at a discounted rate, generating income while extending the same collaborative model that defines its referral network.

Why some funders have pulled back from military and veteran causes, and what that means for smaller nonprofits

Ray raised a trend worth nonprofit finance leaders’ attention: some larger foundations that historically supported military and veteran causes have shifted focus elsewhere, and a handful of larger veteran-serving nonprofits have scaled back or closed entirely. She attributed part of this to funders feeling they’ve “done their due diligence” on the cause, even as need has continued, families are still reaching out for help.

That dynamic isn’t unique to the military and veteran space. Cause areas can fall in and out of funder attention even when underlying need hasn’t changed, which is part of why Ray points back to diversified funding and organizational staying power as the real defense, not counting on any single cause trend to hold.

A recent grant from the Morgan Stanley Alliance for Children’s Mental Health helped Project Sanctuary formalize a dedicated teen mental health program, support Ray said is harder to come by than it should be, given how few funders focus specifically on children in military and veteran families.

Three Takeaways

1. Referring a family to another nonprofit isn’t a loss, it’s a trust-building move. Two-way referral relationships between nonprofits improve outcomes and strengthen the credibility of every organization involved.
2. A crowded cause area can still have an unmet niche. The opportunity isn’t “is anyone else doing this cause,” it’s “is anyone else doing this specific thing within it.”
3. A facility or asset can become a revenue stream, not just an expense. Renting underused space to peer nonprofits turns a cost center into a source of diversified income.

Podcast Interview Q&A

Stephen Garten: Heather, walk us through what inspired you to found Project Sanctuary, and what are some of the things you’re most proud of? Twenty years is a really remarkable period of time.

Heather Ray: About twenty years ago, I recognized that military families were not being taken care of. I was a registered nurse working in a small clinic with a military retired doctor, and families from the first Gulf War started arriving with lots of health issues, but it wasn’t just the veteran, it was the veteran, the mom, and the kids. Fast forward to 9/11, and I thought, what in the world is going to happen now, we weren’t taking care of our veterans then, we weren’t taking care of the families. Somebody needed to do something. I started Googling who’s taking care of the families, and nothing came up. So I started speaking to veterans, and next thing you know, I started a nonprofit.

I think what really helps us is that we’ve always relied on our military families for direction, asking what they need more of, what they’d like to see. It was our military families who, a few years ago, said we need specific teen programming. We worked with experts and developed our own curriculum, and we’re continuing to improve that process now.

Stephen Garten: Can you talk about the lack of support that existed prior, and why you think it hadn’t existed? It sounds like you found a real niche, especially around mental health.

Heather Ray: When I started Project Sanctuary and was looking for organizations to support, there really weren’t any that supported the whole family. Lots of organizations do wonderful things, they support the veteran. But when the veteran comes home, the family isn’t on the same page. The veteran may have learned tips, tools, and resources and is feeling great, but they come home to a family that’s still at baseline chaos, because they’re all on this journey together. For me, it made sense to heal the whole family so they could go forth and support one another and support other families. It was also our niche. We complement so many other programs, we’re not in competition. All those wonderful programs supporting veterans get the veteran doing much better, and if we get the whole family involved too, we complement all the other programs.

Stephen Garten: One theme that’s come out of this podcast is finding a specific niche and need before starting a nonprofit, and the second is realizing that collaboration is okay. Can you talk more about how you’ve collaborated within the veterans and military nonprofit space?

Heather Ray: You’re one hundred percent right, Stephen. When you start a nonprofit or any business, the question is what is your niche, is anyone else doing it, how can you do it better, or can you be unique, and then you play on that uniqueness. For Project Sanctuary, our retreats aren’t vacations. We have licensed professional counselors, social workers, certified recreational therapists, a full professional staff, and after the retreat we continue to provide support and services to these families for an additional two years. That really sets us apart.

Collaboration is key. We come from a place of abundance, we believe there’s enough resources out there for all of us if we all play well together. If a family’s in crisis, let’s get them into Project Sanctuary first, and then maybe into another program, or maybe they go through a program specifically for caregivers or spouses first, and then we send them to Project Sanctuary. It makes our impact measures better because we’re continuing the healing journey, and it makes the other nonprofits’ impact measures better too, because we’re all collaborating. It also makes referrals really good, because families have trusted us and formed a relationship with us. So when we say, hey, go to this other nonprofit, we really think you or your family will get a lot out of this, they trust us, and they follow up with the resources we suggest.

Stephen Garten: Catherine, my understanding is the organization has served over 10,000 people over the past 20 years. Can you share how you became involved, and maybe some specific stories?

Catherine Ganley: I’ll start with how I became involved with Project Sanctuary. I was in graduate school to become a licensed therapist, and one night researching I came across this incredible website and thought, if this is for real, I want to be part of it. On a school break, I flew myself out to Granby, Colorado, and volunteered, and the magic happens from almost the first minute when folks start arriving. One of my goals was to be part of this organization eventually, and that was in 2015, I believe retreat number 69. Next week we start retreat number 336. We typically have eight to ten, sometimes twelve families at a retreat, so we’re impacting as many people as we can, only limited by space.

Stephen Garten: What are some of the modalities or techniques you use to help improve mental health? What’s the curriculum or philosophy built on?

Catherine Ganley: In a typical family retreat, we have four full days of workshops and activities. Two days focus on what we call relationship reset, not marriage reset, because we don’t want to exclude anybody who might not be married, it helps build better communication skills across all relationships. Then we have two days that focus more on the mental health side, trauma, different types of trauma, coping skills, self-care. We get into money matters and management styles, which can be very stressful in relationships. That’s with the adults, and on the youth and adolescent side we have workshops that mirror those, but at age-appropriate levels.

Stephen Garten: Is there anything related to psychedelics, or organizations you collaborate with specifically for veterans on that front?

Catherine Ganley: We don’t get into clinical work so much as psychoeducational, that’s a whole other thing. However, we have referral resources if someone’s interested, we can redirect them. On our family services team, the two years of aftercare, we have a licensed social worker managing that. One of the really neat things that happens on the last day of retreat is we ask participants to make a list of resources they’ve used that they’ve had a good experience with, which is nice, because sometimes we hear about one we hadn’t heard of and can go research it and see if it’s someone we want to work with.

Stephen Garten: Is there breath work or meditation at these retreats?

Catherine Ganley: Absolutely. We do a lot of recreational therapy activities with the whole family, and everything is designed toward building better communication, emotion regulation, and learning to talk to each other more effectively. We’ll do some breath work, particularly when we get into the psychoeducation around trauma work, coping skills, and self-care.

Stephen Garten: Can you talk about the Morgan Stanley funding and your recent progress there?

Heather Ray: Morgan Stanley has been an amazing gift for our program, dedicating a large sum of money specifically to our teens’ mental health and helping us build out that program. There aren’t a lot of organizations that get it, to be honest. So many organizations have moved on from the veteran and from military families, so finding an organization still willing to invest in the nonprofit is going to make our impact numbers even stronger. It allows us to do the things we need to do to formalize our program.

Stephen Garten: When you say organizations have moved on from veterans, can you unpack that? What trends are you seeing, and how have you thought about continuing to garner support even when others are passing on this cause?

Heather Ray: The applications speak for themselves, families are still reaching out for help. We’re flying drones, we’re deployed, we have Navy ships all over the world, we’re engaged, but it’s not treated like we’re at war, and there’s not the patriotic support you’d expect. A lot of larger foundations have moved away from supporting military and veteran causes, they’re more focused on other areas of interest, they feel like they’ve done their due diligence. Some of the larger nonprofits have scaled back to operating only in their own state to simplify, and we’ve watched a few of the larger nonprofits fold, which is always concerning. But we’ve been around for twenty years, we’re mission focused, and we know our families still need us. We’ve also expanded a little to take care of first responders, because that whole family serves too, and when someone comes home at night from a day as a police officer or firefighter, they bring that trauma with them, and it becomes layered trauma. We’ve taken our model and used it effectively for first responders, but there isn’t a lot of financial support for that yet. I’m hoping we can change some of that.

Stephen Garten: Your annual budget is around two million a year. How do you think about reaching that, roughly, across individuals, corporations, foundations, grants, and earned revenue?

Heather Ray: We’ve been grant heavy for quite a few years. Our latest development hire was specifically to enhance the relationship side of the funding cycle, so now we’re actually growing individual donations, and larger donor events have been really good to us, but we’re still a little grant heavy. It takes a diversified funding approach to make sure we don’t have all of our eggs in one basket, so one funder pulling back doesn’t put us in big trouble. Now that we have our own retreat center, that allows us to provide consistency and quality with our retreats. We’re also still located in other parts of the country, but the retreat center gives us a source of revenue too, we invite other nonprofits to use our retreat site at a discount. I’ve always said if I had a retreat center, I’d share it. There are so many nonprofits out there, and it’s tough to offer a quality therapeutic center set up specifically for singles, couples, or families at a price they can afford. It’s another way we give back and collaborate, and make sure we’re still here next year.

Stephen Garten: Catherine, from your professional background, how does trauma in military families compare to what you’ve seen in general populations?

Catherine Ganley: There’s a lot of similarity in the trauma. We get into complex trauma, repeat trauma incidences. Trauma can even come from someone being severely injured and needing multiple surgeries, just the trauma of going back into the hospital over and over again, and that trauma bleeds down to the rest of the family. Kids grow up with this trauma already ingrained in them. Recently, a lot of the families we’re working with came together post-military-service, and a lot of the kids were born post-service, so they weren’t part of the picture before mom or dad had this major change in how their brain works. They’ve only known this parent this way, and there’s guilt layered on top of that, it wasn’t always like this. It’s a blooming onion of layers to work through, and we know we only have a short window of time with these families. We joke that we’re asking them to drink from a fire hose, because there’s a lot we’re trying to get to them, but that’s where we start. That’s part of why we offer two years of follow-on services, though it doesn’t necessarily end there, if somebody needs us, they can reach back out five or ten years down the road. Interestingly, a few retreats ago we had a family come through that is third generation for us, which is very exciting.

Stephen Garten: What have we not covered that you’d like to touch on?

Catherine Ganley: A portion of the Morgan Stanley grant has allowed us to create a continuing-the-conversation, post-retreat online group for teens. I’ve been reaching out to teens who’ve come through retreat, telling them about this new program to continue conversations after their retreat, and there’s been a lot of interest, we’ve reached out to almost 40 teenagers who’ve been through a retreat, and we have regular participants who show up every week. We talk about building trust and community, what it’s like living in a military, veteran, or first responder family, because these kids have a different experience than their civilian counterparts. We talk about things they always thought were normal in their house that turn out to be different at a friend’s house, and how to strengthen those connections. Families have had the retreat experience together, and it’s a strong community for them to maintain, and we encourage the teens to stay in touch with each other too, because what they experience at retreat is a microcosm of experience and vulnerability, and that sense of community matters, especially because a lot of our veteran families live pretty rurally and that limits their socializing with other veteran families, and caregivers, spouses and partners especially, get very isolated.

Heather Ray: What makes Project Sanctuary unique is that we serve the youth and kids too, we’re healing generational trauma. You can go back to Vietnam and see the trauma passed down to the kids raised by Vietnam veterans. In so many of these families, serving your country is an honor, and their kids sign up and serve too, so you’re watching generations and generations. These parents have taken the initiative to address mental health and bring their children into the world of healing and hope and resources, and we’re watching generational shifts. Our kiddos are doing pretty darn good, which is exciting to watch, because their parents were brave enough to address their own mental health and introduce these concepts to their kids. We believe we’re healing generational trauma bonds, and that’s really what makes us different.

Stephen Garten: What are other ways people listening can get involved and support your organization?

Heather Ray: We’re ProjectSanctuary.us on the web, and we’re on all of our social media. We also offer retreats in Texas, and hopefully again next year somewhere in the Southeast. People can volunteer, or if they know a family in crisis, please refer them to us, there’s always someone here to answer and help. There’s no wrong door with us, and if we’re not the absolute perfect fit, we’ll refer them to another organization. We always need people who believe in our mission and are willing to help spread the word. Donations are wonderful, but volunteering is great too, come hang out with us at a retreat and see what we do.

Stephen Garten: Talk to us about the Texas retreats. We’re based in Austin, so where have you operated in Texas?

Heather Ray: We’re right down the road, in Marble Falls, one of our favorite retreat centers.

Stephen Garten: I love Marble Falls, the Bear King Brewery is out there, and the Blue Bonnet Cafe, their pie is amazing.

Heather Ray: Yes, we love their pie.

Stephen Garten: Any closing points you’d like to make?

Heather Ray: We’re honored to host any family that could benefit from therapeutic and supportive services, any era, any discharge, any service. As long as they’re ready to do the work and get to it, those are our people.

Catherine Ganley: And don’t forget that dogged determination, because it took more than one try to get this particular grant.

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