What We Do

Strategy Development

For decades, strategy development involved a grand unveiling of a big plan that a ton of effort went into. It would be exciting and galvanizing for a year, sometimes two, and then began to feel irrelevant and gradually less referenced and considered – until it was time to build a new plan. Some version of this is still operational in many organizations.

We help partners break that cycle. The rate at which major facets of society are changing means those that plan this way are perpetually behind, not leading. Our strategy development approach involves establishing 5 core elements:

• A shared understanding of the principles you operate under
• Who you serve (and who you don’t and why)
• The criteria that separate a good opportunity from an amazing one
• The collective tolerance for risk and uncertainty, and
• the core measures of success in your work.

This approach gives you a set of practical tools to bring strategy into day-to-day operations. Instead of specifying what you should do two years from now, it catalyzes an ongoing process for considering your responses to evolving situations. What is a good strategy changes, and what got you success in the past is in no way guaranteed to make you successful in the future. So instead, work with us to set the foundation for a culture of continuous learning and intentional, evidence-based decision-making.

 

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 

Inequities, both subtle and overt, are perpetuated by discrimination across the myriad systems we all live in. Wages, health, housing, criminal justice involvement, educational outcomes and virtually every other well-being measure shows that not being part of the default for race, gender, ability/disability and other sources of difference is associated with poorer outcomes. It is a fully researched and understood reality that systems perpetuate outcomes that are racist/sexist/ableist, etc.   

At the same time, people within those systems may personally feel quite open to the lives and experiences of others.  They can care about resolving injustices and in no way want to do harm.   

The work of strengthening diversity, equity and inclusion in organizations starts by doing the research to understand the scale, sources and experiences of inequities within the organization and its field.  Then it requires doing the hard, emotional work of reconciling that with intentions and recognizing that we operate within these broader systems of oppression.  Only then, can DEI initiatives extend beyond positive but tentative steps like employment censuses into being a core consideration in all decisions and a core measure of being successful in your work.      

Project/Network/Initiative Start-up  

Our team has worked in the not for profit and government sectors and consulted with hundreds of organizations over our careers.  The result is a deep knowledge of how the sectors work, how to build smart, and prove early and effectively that your work is important and essential.   

In the early stages, we can help initiatives get off to the right start by serving alternately as a coach, cheerleader, and honest friend.  We work with organizations and leaders we believe in, and use our knowledge, connections, and research skills to help them forge their way.    

Organizational Change

In every organization, there are times when it’s clear that something needs to change.  But how to get everyone on the same page, and even exactly what page that should be, aren’t always easy to work out.  A good external partner can help you assess how things are working now, clarify a vision for how they should be, and systematically work with you to overcome the obstacles to change and build the incentives and infrastructure to maintain a new normal.   

Change is never easy work, but we strive to make it intentional, caring, and impactful.  We leave organizations stronger, better at listening across levels, and with improved outcomes for those they serve. 

Performance Indicators and Metrics

Just about every working person has experienced bad performance management processes with indicators that failed to capture all that was accomplished, or hold achievements in the context of the barriers that were presented.  At best, bad indicators and metrics get ignored, at worst, they drive efforts in directions that are counter to the organization’s priorities (like spending more time reporting what’s been done than doing it).   

We have had lots of experience with bad metrics and are passionate about helping organizations and networks build better indicators that reflect a balance of considerations for what success looks like and that involve intentional exploration and co-learning within teams about what is possible and what challenges hinder progress.  This work is iterative – we work with teams to build potentially strong metrics, pilot them and track what happens, and then revise until they are:  

• Manageable to track 
• Compelling across the organization 
• Directly mapped to impacts on service populations 

Strengths/Needs/Service Populations Assessments

When programs are new or at inflection points, it can be important to reach out to the community and learn what the priorities are.  Sometimes the question is as simple as how many people there are in a given geographic area that would be appropriate for our services and how we can connect with them.   

Using a mix of direct engagement and data from the census and other community datasets, we are able to help organizations size, define and understand their service populations.  As mixed methods researchers, this ranges from standing in front of grocery stores talking to those coming out; to organizing and facilitating engaging community meetings; to reviewing existing narratives and studies; or pulling restricted census data to gain more complete pictures.   

Evaluation

We do a wide range of evaluations for different clients, customized to ensure that the core concerns of both funders and the organization are built in.  We specialize in measuring the impact of programs on those they serve, and including key process measures so we can fully understand why and how the data comes out as it does.  We use a mix of methods to ensure that we both have concrete numbers and an accurate reflection of the experiences of those engaging with the program or service.   

Our preference is to begin evaluations in the early stages of a program so that we can provide real-time information that helps the program develop and have time to build custom tools and approaches that work smoothly with the program’s operations and don’t add a lot of additional work.  But we welcome evaluation projects at any stage and can work with your existing data to clarify what can and can’t be known with it, and the priorities for gathering data that will fill out the picture around the impact being produced.   

Policy Development and Evidence-Based Advocacy

Sometimes individuals and organizations recognize that they have an important model or program that deserves broader consideration and to achieving that will require advocacy with government or private sector entities.  We have extensive public policy expertise and the ability to customize our evaluations and other projects to align with and address the particular needs and considerations of different audiences.  This includes practices like calculating relative costs and benefits for better comparison to existing services, building our approaches to align with existing approaches used by the target audience, and engaging them in the development of the evaluation metrics.