our expertise
Our clients are movement-builders, local and national nonprofits, city government agencies, and community-based partnerships that care about creating better systems for a more just world.
We help our clients measurably and manageably tackle complex systems change. And, we do so in a way that centers people, builds relationships, and facilitates relational learning.
PRACTICE AREAS
Social, cultural, and racial justice movements
Systems change, collective impact, and movement building
Anti-racism, power structures, and DEIBJ (diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice)
Health equity, environmental racism, and food justice
Education and community contexts
Early childhood education
School health and social-emotional learning
Educational equity in K-12 public education
Opportunity youth and re-engagement
OUR FOCUS
Process
Let us nerd out over frameworks. We work with you to lay out a clear roadmap so you can focus on the issues at hand.
Relationships
Progress moves at the speed of trust. We help to create an inclusive environment for you and your partners to work together in a way that centers people, builds relationships, and facilitates relational learning because we believe we go further together.
Results
Germination unfolds only when we’ve created the necessary conditions in the soil, air, and water. We work with you and your partners to foster connectivity and alignment — necessary conditions — and then we’ll help you to articulate and measure what success looks like and feels like.
FYI, our focus is partly inspired by the Interaction Institute for Social Change’s Dimensions of Success model.
OUR EXPERTISE
Data, strategy & design
We help you to engage community voice, embodied knowledge, and cultural history to understand and articulate inequities in your community.
Approaches and tools we utilize:
Community needs assessments, landscape analysis, and environmental scans
Data equity design, architecture, and implementation
Improvement science, continuous improvement
Anti-racist, inclusive design thinking
Learning & evaluation
We coach you to build evaluative muscles and mindsets to illuminate insights for learning and action.
Approaches and tools we utilize:
Emergent learning and reflective practice
Developmental evaluation, Most Significant Change
Ecosystem and social system mapping
Place-based systems change evaluation
Theory of change, evaluation frameworks
Convening, facilitation & sense-making
We guide you to surface tensions and to navigate spheres of inquiry, discovery, and synthesis. And, we hold space for you and your partners to uncover the root causes of inequities you see in your community and to co-create strategies for collaborative action.
Approaches and tools we utilize:
Anti-racist Results-Based Accountability and results-based facilitation
Root cause and intersectional power analysis
Community data walks and journey mapping
Inclusive and participatory facilitation, Liberating Structures
Design thinking, storyboarding, and action planning
Strategy design for movement and coalition building
Coaching & thought partnership
We listen for your values, underlying assumptions, and specific context. We’ll hold a mirror up. We’ll ask tough questions. And, we’ll work with you to build your capacity to confront your next big challenge.
Approaches and tools we utilize:
Ongoing strategic advising
Strategy design series
One-on-one coaching
Custom engagement
