Overview

Public agencies, non-profit service providers, and community development organizations across the country find challenges, both internally and externally, with meeting their goals of establishing effective engagement and relationship with the communities and voters they serve. These misalignments cause cycles of distrust and trauma for both organization staff and community members - perpetuating institutional bias against genuine engagement with community stakeholders. As a result, often community investments by agencies and organizations don't meet actual needs on the ground and community members continue experiencing generational harm in spite of hard work and good intentions within a partnership.

The Process

Our work starts with learning and acknowledging history. We specialize in identifying the narratives often left out and creating a comfortable environment for them to be highlighted, bringing often new data points and stakeholders to the table. We've learned that most barriers to conversation and healthy dialogue is when we ignore the history and context that brings people together to seek solutions, so our team focuses on the root cause of the potential tensions and biases that exist in the room. We also know that humanity and joy is the only way we can get through harmful situations, so our team excels in establishing common ground amongst uncommon stakeholders, so that we can ease conflict in a trauma-informed manner that gets us to shared, impactful, and meaningful solutions.

The End

Community partnerships with our organizations is the way forward, it's the best way to meet institutional goals for impact and deliver on promises to our community. Getting to a partnership can be straightforward and simple with the right coaching. We see our role as that bridge-builder, that translation service between complex entities and stakeholders. Together, we can build deep lasting relationships that can help contrasting stakeholders weather through storms of change and disruption, knowing that the baseline of accountability and common vision is strong.