A civic strategy practice that builds.Based in Colorado Springs.
Senior-led. The principal is the practitioner. Each engagement begins with a question and a calendar — an evening, weeks, or months. Pricing slides as needed, so a labor council and a foundation can both commission this work.
What we do
Strategy
Strategy is the center of the practice. Common questions: how an organization develops its next generation of leaders, what positioning to take into a new phase, where mission and operations have come apart, how to engage city government or a public agency on an emerging issue. An engagement begins with one of those questions and a calendar — usually six to twelve weeks — for an organization or for a coalition acting together, and produces something written: a memo, a framework, a positioning paper an organization can act on. Retainers extend that work into a longer cadence. The civic audit looks at an institution, network, or field and asks where civic life is strong, what capacities have atrophied, where the work sits in its broader context, and what comes next.
Programming and engagement design
Strategy answers what to do. Programming and engagement design answer how. A program arc shapes a season or a year of an organization’s offerings — a member education series, a public lecture track, a fellowship cycle. An engagement process designs how a community is consulted on a decision that affects it — a budget priority, a land-use change, a strategic plan. Curriculum design extends the same craft to training programs and workshop series.
Convening, facilitation, and practice
Convening and facilitation are how those services get delivered when the room matters. A hosted convening is a single occasion — a retreat, a dialogue, a town hall, a working session — held for the question that brought the room together, sometimes inside one organization and sometimes across many. Standing facilitation is recurring: a board, a working group, a coalition’s standing committee, a member gathering held on a regular cadence. When the engagement calls for it, the work includes programming from the Palmer Institute.
How we work
Most strategic challenges aren’t problems with known answers; they’re questions that require the organization to change in response to them. The firm’s job is to hold the question well enough that the organization can find its own. Engagements take the wider field into account and end with the organization more capable, more resilient, and more adaptive.
Initiatives
Urban Gallery
launching 2026
A mobile app for finding public art on the ground — sculptures, murals, installations, monuments. 43,000+ pieces across 200+ cities and 80+ countries, drawn from OpenStreetMap and city open-data portals. Builds walking tours from where you stand.
Learn more →Palmer institute
summer 2026
A small civic education center opening in Colorado Springs. Workshops, seminars, multi-week courses, and experimentals — the Institute’s own immersive learning format — plus group and custom programs for organizations. Four areas of work — civic life, personal development, arts and culture, leadership — though nothing here belongs only to one.
Visit site ↗The Back Room Social Club
opening 2026
Opening in Colorado Springs in 2026. Evenings of conversation, debate, and the kinds of gatherings that need their own room. The club appears in different places across the city, with public nights and member nights both. The shape comes from the people in it.
Visit site ↗Contact
Email seth@backroomstrategies.com to start a conversation. A short message — what you’re working on, what’s hard about it, what kind of help might fit — gets a reply from Seth in a few days.