Strategic review

We look back at current and past work to understand the impact to date and articulate the drivers and pathways that contributed to that impact. We design this process to lift-up insights relevant for strategic planning and inform the future direction of the work.

Organizational diagnostic

We systematically assess the organization's external positioning as well as internal state of staff, culture, and operations to form a foundation for the strategic planning process.

Landscaping

We have a strong network and existing understanding in core areas of importance to gender and racial equity—including economic opportunity, reproductive justice, and health equity. We build on this knowledge through secondary research, interviews, and thoughtful synthesis to ensure that the strategic planning work is positioned well within the existing ecosystem.

Visioning and value setting

We begin our strategic planning processes with thoughtful visioning work that builds on past progress to set ambitious, yet achievable, goals. This is often a collaborative process that engages core internal and external stakeholders in order to have a clear anchor for the process and the work.

Strategic positioning

We use research and analysis to clearly frame the core areas of opportunity and need. Then, we map these opportunities to the landscape of work and funding that is being applied to these areas. From here, we surface gaps and ready opportunities for our clients to have notable impact.

Strategic plan development

Our ultimate deliverable is a strategic plan. Anchored in a strategic framework, each plan lays out the vision, mission, strategic outcomes, and set of strategies for achieving these goals. This is grounded in a practical plan of action and backed by quantitative and qualitative data. We develop materials that engage the board, peer or potential donors as well as staff to ensure that there is both buy-in as well as a clear course of action moving forward.

Measurement and learning

We work with clients to establish outcomes and indicators to guide strategy implementation. We ensure these metrics are feasible to collect data against and comprehensive enough to provide a deep understanding of impact. We complement these metrics with a set of learning questions and guided activities for clients to intentionally evolve their understanding through action.

Funding mechanism design

We have experience working with philanthropic entities to design tailored funding mechanisms that aim to support specific issues, stakeholders, and systems. This includes grantmaking strategy design, grant size, operational structure & selection of fiscal sponsors, grantmaking criteria design, staffing & skillset recommendations, and more.

Design / advisory committees

We increasingly see the value of working with a diverse set of actors to actually design and drive decision making for and with philanthropic entities. We have scoped and created Design Councils for philanthropic clients laying out the core responsibilities, conducting research to inform meetings and planning, facilitating the sessions, and ensuring that the process is equitable and leads to innovative, thoughtful and effective results.

Grantee selection, management, collaboration & learning

We know strategic planning processes only go so far. We work with clients to take their pillars and priorities and conduct deeper research and landscaping to find targeted grantees to lead the work. We do this by designing RFPs, conducting calls and managing relationship development, supporting proposal design, and guiding funding decisions.

Donor collaboration

The funding space is often siloed and at times redundant, making it more challenging for grantees to find funding and engage with donors. We have deep experience bringing funders together to achieve a common goal. We develop partnership charters, create strategies for the collectives, manage the ongoing facilitation, integrate learning sessions, engage external advisory boards, commission research and more.