case study: Supporting Racial Equity Practices across Multiple partners  

Seventeen sites across the country, various understanding of racial equity practices, some lack of clarity around expectations – we were tasked with identifying racial equity opportunities and gaps across agencies and nonprofits focused on youth aging out of foster care.  Not only did we survey the landscape for the client, but we used that information to suggest action plans for each site. We also focused on providing deeper technical assistance to a small, self-selected group of partners interested in designing racial equity projects to jumpstart their community efforts.

case study: Bringing Culture to Learning Communities

When a client asked us to develop a Gallery Walk for an upcoming convening of community organizations, we were excited to lend our expertise in visual communications and experiential learning to support a growing community of practice. 

The validation of culture and shared interest is an important part of how we work with clients and their partners.   With our support to communities of practice, both on and off-line, we link learning to issues that are important to leaders in and outside of their work lives.  And, although technology is important, old-school, real-life experiences of culture can help celebrate, inspire, and sustain efforts when face-time isn't possible.

case study: Organizational Assessment Meets Strategic Direction Setting

As a seasoned group of consultants, we pride ourselves on being nimble.  Clients' needs change and we work hard to tailor our advice based on those changes.  We recently had the opportunity to work with an employment workforce agency in a major city to assess the agency's operations, partnerships, and systems to date.  As the work got underway, we began to use real-time feedback loops, at the client's request, to help establish guideposts for considering a new strategic direction.  Our team leveraged its expertise in organizational development, evaluation, and business modeling to address the shifting, real-time needs of the client.

Case Study: Designing Conferences as Capacity Building Supports

Our team is really good at managing large conferences, even though we don't advertise events management as a consulting specialty.  However, when a new client asked us to manage a major conference (because a current client had recommended our team), we said yes.  Why? We view conference management as the operational side of what really matters: designing great content, sequencing ideal program flow, and networking opportunities – all with the goal of building capacity and leadership skills for attendees.  Our primary goal is to use our deep content expertise to meet the learning objectives for stakeholders – and then we let our pride in detail handle the rest. 

Case Study: leveraging talent feedback to support member companies 

A previous project with a philanthropy-supporting organization sparked a request from a major trade association: Could we develop a perception study that identified diversity barriers in in U.S.-based PR firms? We leveraged our team's solid background in evaluation, research, and strategic communications to develop a field scan, survey instrument, and interview protocol to identify why black and Latino PR professionals were not progressing much beyond mid-level jobs in major PR firms.  The commissioned report shared the findings and provided recommendations for improving the diversity pipeline.