Built for the people the system was not built for.
Trestle is a funding strategy consultancy working across nonprofit, for-profit, and film. We started from a simple observation: the gap between great work and great funding is rarely about merit. It is about strategy, relationships, and knowing which doors to knock on. We exist to close that gap, especially for the founders, organizers, and creators who have historically been pointed toward the wrong doors.
Our approach is relational first. We embed ourselves in your work, learn your community, and build funding infrastructure that reflects your values, not just your budget projections.
Trestle was founded to grow. We are building a team of consultants who bring deep sector expertise and a genuine investment in equitable, sustainable funding. What unites us is a belief that the people doing the most important work deserve the most thoughtful support.
Getting funded should never mean becoming someone you are not. We are here to make sure it does not.
The person behind the work.
Kat Dean founded Trestle with a simple conviction: that the people most overlooked by traditional funding systems are often the most fundable. They just need a different map.
After years working in development for diverse-founded organizations across sectors, Kat brings a rare cross-sector fluency to every engagement. But her sharpest edge is this: she understands the structural gaps that queer founders and community organizations face in conventional funding landscapes, and she has learned to turn those gaps into leverage.
Where traditional funders see risk, Kat sees an opening. Queer founders are building in communities that institutional capital has not reached, solving problems that mainstream investors are only beginning to understand, and telling stories that audiences are hungry for. Trestle exists to help them move faster, pitch smarter, and access the avenues that were always there, just not on the standard map.
She built Trestle to be something bigger than a solo practice: a consultancy where deep sector expertise meets genuine community investment, and where getting funded never means compromising who you are.