I recently had the privilege of co-designing and facilitating a three month experiment called Aligning for Impact. Building off an initial probe we wrote about last year, it was designed to explore how funders — all working towards similar goals — might be more collectively strategic and harness their network potential. Our hypothesis was that a more aligned approach might improve effectiveness in our shared work. While three months was a short amount of time to experiment with collective approaches, it […]
Author: Rebecca Petzel
Aligning for Impact: A Recap
Recently I wrapped up a brief contract designing and facilitating a workshop for a great network of funders. The task was to model and explore what it would look like if this powerful and diverse community took steps to further align their work for greater impact in the field. Not only am I pleased to say the workshop went as planned, (we had clear success metrics that we hit by all counts), I’m extra pleased to say the act of […]
Six Ideas to Improve Nonprofit Consulting
In many circles, “consultant” seems to be a dirty word. Perhaps only lawyers have a worse reputation as cash cows. I’m guessing House of Lies hasn’t helped that reputation, but at the heart of the stigma, as I see it, is a frustration at how much money consultants cost versus the impact they deliver. We can’t seem to live without them (it’s nearly impossible for any organization to sustain every capacity it could possibly need internally), but this doesn’t warm […]
New Groupaya Brown-bag: Facilitating High-Conflict Groups
Groupaya brown-bags are back! We’d love you to join us April 16th at 1pm for a conversation about navigating high conflict groups. Kristin Cobble, our coach, consultant, and facilitator extraordinaire with years of experience helping groups lean-in to conflict has volunteered to share her experience and wisdom. We’d also love to learn from the field, so come prepared to share whatever tips you might have as well as actively listen and learn. Our goal is to explore facilitation techniques to […]
How Can We Make Nonprofit Consulting Transformational?
Late last year, we launched a survey with Shiree Teng and CompassPoint to learn more about how nonprofits are working with consultants. We wanted to know: Are nonprofits able to find the help they need? How is the working relationship between nonprofits and consultants? Is the work sticking? We had a small (264), but diverse (in size, age, and focus) set of responses. The majority of respondents had an operating budget greater than $1 million, with almost 20% in the […]