Organizational Development

We help new and evolving boards to clarify their purpose, strengthen their effectiveness, and become the bold, supportive, and visionary leaders that their organizations need. Through board development processes or retreats, we can support your group to collectively chart a clear and concrete path forward that is both rooted in the organization’s values and moves you closer to your vision for the future.

We orient to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) work as a collaborative process of building an organization where folks of color, queer and trans people, disabled folks, working-class people, and people of other marginalized identities can thrive. We believe that effective DEIJ work requires intentionally identifying and uprooting organizational practices, policies, and work cultures rooted in white supremacy culture’s assumptions and norms, and building new structures based on a group’s collective vision and values. Thus, our approach to DEIJ work includes areas where white supremacy culture often manifests within organizations, such as in conflict, feedback practices, and decision-making. Together, we can create a clear roadmap for integrating DEIJ values into your organization’s culture and practices in concrete and tangible ways.

We partner with organizations to co-create innovative and effective organizational structures around key areas of collective culture, including decision-making, feedback, conflict, and governance. Drawing upon proven models, we design values-centered systems and policies that strengthen group culture and improve internal operations.

Examples of internal structures and practices we build include:

• Decision-making processes and matrices;

• Feedback practices and rhythms;

• Peer evaluation processes;

• Conflict norms and containers;

• Accountability and transformation processes;

• Role and responsibilities clarification;

• Sustainable work and annual planning;

• Internal communications refinement.

Through tailored workshops or longer-term learning processes, we can support your team in learning new frameworks, skills, and tools to use in their day-to-day work. Our learning experiences balance sharing content, offering concrete tools, and creating space for participants to apply learnings to their specific context. We offer political education and skill-building workshops around white supremacy culture, principled struggle, navigating conflict, giving and receiving feedback, meeting facilitation, democratic decision-making, leadership and management practices, and more.

We lead strategic planning processes that support groups in sharpening their strategic vision, choosing effective priorities, and setting goals that align with their core values. This kicks off with an initial assessment of the organization’s needs and landscape. From there, we will build an actionable plan to move the organization’s work forward, choose strategic priorities that are rooted in the group’s mission and vision, and set measurable and feasible goals to support implementation.

A Theory of Change describes an organization’s vision for the world it wants, and its particular role and approach in building towards that vision. Through a series of facilitated workshops or a retreat, we can support your group or organization in creating a Theory of Change that underlies and guides their future work. A Theory of Change not only clarifies and sharpens the work of an organization; it can also build deep investment and shared purpose across your team. Key components of this facilitated process include articulating collective values and beliefs, crafting a future vision, and clarifying a specific niche with the movement ecosystem. 

We believe that resilient and meaningful relationships are key to ensuring that groups can effectively show up for each other and their work. Whether your group is undergoing significant change and transformation or simply need a moment to reconnect, we can design a space for members to slow down and reinvest in their relationships. From one-time team retreats to ongoing containers for connection, we support groups to build the relationships they need to sustain their mission-driven work.