The Change Agents We Work With
Movement Builders and Organizers Who…
Build community power and organize to dismantle systems of oppression in service of our collective liberation.
- Are led by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, AAPI, LGBTQIA+, and people with all abilities.
- Center interdependence, community care, liberation, and decolonizing practices and ways of being and knowing.
- Organize 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 Organizations Who…
Resist paternalism and ensure their work is guided by and with the communities they work with, serve, or support.
- Critically interrogate the NPPIC and their role in it, including the predominance of saviorism and individualized service provision baked into the nonprofit system—and the role of the NPPIC 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 Who…
Stop/transition 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 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.
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.
What You Can Expect Working With Us
Not Shying Away From the Hard Questions
We cannot support and serve as change agents in dismantling systems of oppression without interrogating the ways in which capitalism, settler colonialism, and white supremacy shape all social institutions. We commit to continuously learning from and with people through political education. And it is critical that we engage in direct action—in the ways available to us—that challenge the status quo within our fields and society more broadly.
Expect the Unexpected
Our anthropology and ethnography training has increased our comfort with complexity and patience in the face of uncertainty. This is in large part due to the fact that in ethnography, the questions that guide the work change over time. They change as you gain a deeper understanding of the context and learn directly from communities what matters to them. What this means for how work today is that if new insights and unexpected events show that our approach or specific activities are no longer relevant or working, we will recommend pivots and revisions. And we are open to your suggestions for changes—to ensure that our work together is useful and relevant.
Cultural Humility
We are committed to lifelong learning, self-reflection, and self-critique. We continuously seek out different perspectives and do so by creating opportunities to learn from and with you and your communities. We achieve this through reflective listening and dialogue to ensure that our work together centers your knowledge and experience.
How We Can Support You
We support change agents through thought partnership, facilitation, and change strategy; evaluation coaching and training; and collaborative and participatory evaluation.
Thought Partnership,
Facilitation, and Change Strategy
We will engage you in critical dialogue and reflection about your work and build relationships with you. We will hold space and facilitate in ways that center choice, agency, and self-determination. Based on what we learn together, we will focus on approaches that help you think intentionally and act strategically. This is all in service of supporting the change you are trying to create.
- Probing to uncover the assumptions that undergird your practice
- Challenging how you think about and solve problems
- Sharing alternative ways of thinking about issues and change strategies
- Asking you powerful questions and holding space for critical reflection and dialogue
- Working with you to interrogate the ways in which you support and disrupt systems of oppression
Evaluation
Coaching and Training
We offer evaluation coaching and training throughout our work together. We do this in an integrated manner—and as a discrete, formal support. We can provide one-on-one coaching, group training and workshops, and technical assistance on a range of topics including:
- Designing and executing evaluation and learning activities, and why your worldview matters
- Collaborative, participatory, and transformative approaches to learning and evaluation
- Innovative approaches to qualitative data collection and analysis
- Team-based approaches to qualitative data collection and analysis
- Qualitative data analysis software, including database development and management
Collaborative and
Participatory Evaluation
We work with you to design and execute evaluations from start to finish, and are careful to tailor the level of participation to your capacity and needs. We love:
- Evaluation planning and design: Evaluation learning agendas, recruitment planning, theory of change, program maps, logic models, evaluation advisory committees
- Data collection: Interviews, focus groups, World Cafes, journaling, participant observations, surveys, Before and After Action Reviews, and other participatory methods
- Data analysis: Codebook development, grounded theory, thematic analysis, and inductive and deductive coding
- Sensemaking, reporting, and dissemination: Sensemaking sessions, written reports, blogs, presentations, and publications
Current and Past Partners
