The Starting Point
We meet you where you are and work with you to find the way forward that suits your needs. To understand how best to work together, we always begin with listening and exploring with you how you see your community right now, where you’re coming from, and how you’re envisioning the future might unfold. These initial projects may stand individually on their own, or they may be a part of a larger project, depending on what we learn in these early conversations.
Listening
Every project for us starts with listening. We listen so that we can uncover the priorities, culture, and guiding values that will shape and correlate with your projects. In the listening phase, we focus on both what is above and what is below the surface. What we learn in this phase gives us what we need to work with you to identify and reach your goals.
We listen to what you’re saying to us, as well as to the environment around you, which often includes the buildings and neighborhood you inhabit. We also encourage you to listen–to the things that are being said, and to the things that aren’t being said, to what others say about you and your community, and to the stories you tell yourselves.
Steps
Review materials
Form your leadership team
Create of survey and process for community meetings
Collect data
Gather community feedback
Tools
Survey (hosted on our website)Community meeting scripts and talking points
Communication plan
Data analysis
Deliverables
Report with:
• findings and analysis
• outline of potential projects
• cross reference to alignment with core values
• next steps
Money Narratives
We all have a story about money. Often unconsciously, as individuals we’ve made up our minds on the value of money, how to save it and spend it, and who it belongs to. These opinions come from foundational experiences, and guide, more often than we might like, our anxiety or lack thereof around how we interact with money.
The communities we are part of hold collective money stories, too. These stories drive every decision we make and every opinion we have. We work with you to articulate your money stories and figure out how to transform them. This work unlocks, more than anything, your ability to fundraise with sensitivity and joy.
Steps
Review documents such as meeting minutes, sermons, fundraising materials
Conduct interviews
Lead interactive retreats to unearth and articulate current and potential narratives
For faith communities, lead Bible studies to widen a theological understanding of money narratives
Tools
Retreat report articulating what previous narratives have been, where you are going, and recommendations for how to get there
Energized leadership to move the work forward in your community
Strategic Thinking:
Core Values+Strategic Filter
We talk about strategic thinking more than strategic planning because we believe that as life changes and crises emerge, it’s important to be nimble, clear, and effective rather than to stick to a static plan.
For this reason we focus on providing tools and approaches to assessing your strategic priorities over time. Whether or not you choose to develop a full strategic plan, having a clear sense of where you’re heading and what you want to accomplish over time, alongside a clear understanding of your culture and values, can help you make day-to-day decisions in a way that moves you forward authentically toward the organization you’re becoming.
Your core values are the bedrock of all your organization does and the choices you make—or they ought to be. Often organizations have little or no connection to the mission statements or values (many of them outdated or overly broad) that were meant to serve as a touchstone for discerning a way forward. We can provide a framework and work with you to create or revisit core values to make sure they’re authentic, inspiring, and actionable.
Based on our work together, we’ll distill a strategic filter—a framework that you can use to guide your decision-making process in a way that connects every choice to the core values of your community, and create a process for transparent decision-making.
Steps
Review of current mission and vision statements
Review of current or past strategic plans
Lead listening of community through a survey, community meetings, and/or interactive retreat with leadership
Data analysis
Interactive process to finalize core values
Tools
Report in on listening process
Beautifully written and articulated core values
Strategic filter for decision-making
Sample scenarios to flex the muscle of the strategic filter
Recommendations for moving forward
Visioning Retreats
A strategic vision retreat is a gathering of people who represent different aspects of your community to draw out a sense of vision for where you’re headed. Rather than a planning session with goals and timelines, this retreat will engage different parts of your mind, body, and spirit through exercises that free up responses and conversations that might otherwise be locked behind the doors of “how it’s always been done.
Steps
Review of pertinent materials
Interactive retreat
Results
Energized leadership
Retreat report with recommendations