Work With Us

The Change Agents We Work With …

  • Movement Builders & Organizers

    Building community power and organizing to dismantle systems of oppression in service of our collective liberation.

    Led by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, AAPI, LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities.

    Center interdependence, community care, liberation, and decolonizing practices and ways of being and knowing.

    Organizing to abolish the prison industrial complex (including police, prisons, ICE, detention centers, border control, and military) and disrupt the domination of the nonprofit industrial philanthropic complex (NPIC) under neoliberal racial capitalism that promotes charity, bootstrap mythology, and notions of deserving and undeserving.

  • Nonprofits and Community Organziations

    Resisting paternalism and ensuring their work is guided by and with the communities they work with, serve, or support.

    Critically interrogating the nonprofit industrial philanthropic complex (NPIC) and their role in it, including the predominance of saviorism and individualized service provision baked into the nonprofit system — and the role of the NPIC in coopting radical movement organizing.

    Want to truly understand the change they are and are not able to generate — not prove they are equitable, doing good, and so on.

    Are not white-led or dominant OR know being so is problematic and are taking steps to change it.

  • Funders

    Stopping / transitioning away from paternalistic, exploitative, and extractive philanthropic practices.

    Taking actions like spending down endowments, increasing payouts beyond the 5 percent minimum, relying on grassroots fundraising over wealthy donors, and establishing constituent- and movement-led grantmaking strategies.

    Are not dictatorial about what they want out of evaluation (e.g., prescribed learning and evaluation questions, methods, metrics, etc.)

    Are not white-led or dominant OR know being so is problematic and are taking steps to change it.

Does this sound like you? If so, we might be a good fit to partner! If this does not sound like you, but you aspire to be in this place, let’s have a conversation!

How We Structure Our Contracts and Our Work Together

Preamble

Contracts include a preamble that we discuss before anything is signed to ensure that we are all clear about our political and ethical commitments surrounding a contractual relationship together. Additionally, discussing the preamble supports a collective decision about whether we want to work together. The preamble is also designed as an ongoing reflection / conversation tool to engage with throughout working together as there is interest/space/time. Read Our Preamble

Learning the Context (Building / Foundational) Phase

Dedicated time early on to building relationships and learning the context of our work together is foundational. Building understandings of diverse perspectives across multiple positionalities is key during this phase. This time informs our ability to develop relevant and useful projects together.

Iterative Implementation Phase

The support we provide prioritizes emergence. This means we expect our approach and specific activities to shift as we learn more about the context and our relationships deepen.

Sliding Scale Rates

  • If you work outside the NPIC, in global majority movement-building and grassroots organizing.

  • If you work with a NPIC organization, collectively working to disrupt historic and institutionalized oppression within your organization.

  • If you work with a NPIC organization, significantly contributing to historic and institutionalized oppression and wealth hoarding — even as you work to disrupt and challenge from within.

We have continued to experiment with alternatives to hourly-based pricing. The experience and knowledge we offer is a greater value than the literal hours of labor worked. And the value is deeper than merely conducting an evaluation or facilitating a session / gathering — we engage you in critical reflection and dialogue, provide various forms of support, and share relevant resources to help transform your practice.

For this reason, we are curious about a relational, values-based approach to setting consulting costs.

How to Choose Your Tier

    • You organize / work against wealth hoarding as an organization (e.g., foundation committed to spend down endowment and redistributing wealth to communities and movement organizers).

    • Your organization disrupts / challenges the prevalence of white-dominant organizations and institutions (e.g., your leadership and / or staff are all or primarily global majority identified / bodied).

    • Your organization disrupts / challenges white saviorism, colonial, and neocolonial practices and structures (e.g., your leadership and staff are all or primarily global majority identified / bodied; people making key decisions reflect the communities you work with).

    • Your organization disrupts / challenges heteronormativity, compulsory able-bodiedness, and gender binaries (e.g., job descriptions and hiring processes do not require being abled; any forms you ask people within or outside of your organization to fill out reflect non-binary gender identities).

    • People who do the work of your organization are all or mostly volunteers.

    • You support grassroots organizing and movement building as a funder, and/or you engage in this work as an organization.

    • Your organization helps to ameliorate systemic pay inequities (e.g., there is a minimal gap between your highest- and lowest-paid staff person).

    • You exist and benefit from wealth hoarding as an organization (e.g., private foundations with large endowment and no plans to spend down and / or that pay out —per federal tax law requirements — only the minimum 5 percent of total assets annually.)

    • Your organization contributes to and / or embodies the prevalence of white-dominant / centered organizations and institutions (e.g., your leadership and / or staff are all or primarily white identified / bodied.)

    • Your organization feeds into white saviorism, colonial, and neocolonial practices and structures (e.g., your leadership and staff are all or primarily white identified / bodied and primarily serve global majority identified / bodied; people making decisions do not reflect the communities you work with)

    • Your organization practices / reinforces heteronormativity, compulsory able-bodiedness, and gender binaries (e.g., your job descriptions and hiring processes require being abled; your media images only depict gender norms, straight couples and / or abled people)

    • People who do the work of your organization are all paid as staff / workers

    • Your organization contributes to systemic pay inequities (e.g., there is a large gap between your highest- and lowest-paid staff person)

We invite you to self-select a tier that reflects your organizational resources and wealth. We encourage you to consider your organizational location within the nonprofit and philanthropic industrial complex that centers whiteness, neoliberalism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. And we ask you to reflect on the extent to which your organization perpetuates or disrupts the ongoing systemic and institutionalized surplus wealth and capital accumulation among elites.

This sliding scale represents a way to disrupt the traditional, transactional client-consultant relationship that is established and assumed through contracts — a relationship that is very much about competition, extracting labor, and generating profit.

We are committed to providing consulting services to organizations that would otherwise not be able to afford it. In service of this commitment, the highest figure on the scale is our “Pay It Forward” tier, which enables us to provide a discount at the lowest tier for those who need it. This also helps supplement the many hours of grassroots organizing and evaluation field building work that we are directly involved in.

We invite those who have accumulated wealth and various forms of capital to pay more and those who have not to pay less, thus supporting the redistribution of wealth.

We also invite you to have a conversation with us about this sliding scale because we understand that there is more nuance beyond what we can capture here. We also believe that your tier may shift if we develop a long-term partnership because we recognize that responses to these prompts may shift over time.