Services and Example Engagement

These are our core services which can be adapted for each engagement.

Community Engagement to help you identify stakeholders and their needs and to co-create and co-own programs. This also can involve partnering with community organizations to reach people in the places they are comfortable at times that work for them in partnership with familiar people.
Process documentation and re-design with stakeholder engagement using Design Thinking techniques.
Operating model and program design.
Surveys, interviews, and focus groups.
Stakeholder identification focused on enhancing social equity by identifying and reaching stakeholders on their terms.
Facilitation of engagement, research, and design activities across borders.
Design workshops to help teams intensely focus on creating solutions. Drop-in design to allow stakeholders to co-create on their own schedules.
IT Functional design.
Change management that empowers your team and constituents to own and drive change, with great attention paid to ensuring change does not interrupt services. Tools such as job aids, training, and ongoing evaluation are employed.

Example Engagement

Situation:

An established charitable fundraising organization sought to engage people in its geographic area who, while interested in the cause of the organization, do not participate in the organization. They needed to know how their organization could better serve more people in the community.

Action:

We helped the organization bring the best team to write a winning grant to fund the project. In collaboration with staff, we designed a one-year program driving exploration of issues and opportunities and the a process of co-creation. The process occurred in four major phases.

Foundational Exploration: We worked with the Executive Director to design a structured interview with five other fundraising executives nationwide. With our facilitation, he had conversational interviews with other leaders that helped us define new opportunities and identify common issues that fundraising organizations with similar missions face. To get a closer view, we then honed in locally with interviews of five local leaders who know the organization and local landscape well.

Public Engagement: We helped recruit a diverse set of focus group participants from the community, with an emphasis on reaching marginalized populations. We partnered with local organizations to work together on research and reach their members. Our team facilitated one-hour focus groups where we utilized a structured flow to engage participants and learn their perceptions of the organization, what they seek in a fundraising opportunity, and how they want to relate to the organization.

Co-Creation: We designed an online session to bring together the Board of Directors and the team of volunteers that produces the annual event. We presented this group with interview and focus group findings to help them understand perceptions of the organization, what potential constituents are looking for, and national trends. We then facilitated a series of breakouts focused on co-creation of ideas for each of six opportunity areas identified. In two hours, over 100 ideas were generated and around 30 received at least one vote from the group for potential implementation.

Implementation and Assessment: We planned and executed a board session to select and prioritize the 130+ ideas. To make this efficient, our team set the room up ahead of time with ideas grouped by topics. Then board members assigned estimates of cost, feasibility, and impact. Using gamification and voting, board members prioritized initiatives. We then used this to develop a roadmap for change.