The Work We Do

Strategy is the center of the practice.

A civic strategy engagement is built around a single question and runs six to twelve focused weeks. The deliverable is something written — a memo, a framework, a positioning paper an organization can act on. 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 a coalition holds together across member organizations, what a board’s actual function should be, how to engage city government or a public agency on an emerging issue.

Coalition strategy is the same shape, built around a group acting together. Common questions: what holds a shared agenda, where members’ interests converge or diverge, how governance fits the work, when to expand or contract membership.

Strategy retainers extend that work into a longer cadence — monthly or quarterly check-ins, written deliverables when needed, advisory between major decisions.

The civic audit is a four-to-six-week diagnostic — of an institution, or of a coalition, network, or field. It asks where civic life is strong, what capacities have atrophied, where the work sits in its broader context, and what comes next. The output is a written audit with concrete recommendations.

Let’s engage with the question.

Programming and engagement design shape the calendar — what an organization offers, in what sequence, and how community is brought into decisions that affect it.

A program arc shapes a season or a year of an organization’s offerings. Common shapes: 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. Common contexts: a budget priority, a land-use change, a strategic plan.

Curriculum design builds the same kind of structure for training programs and workshop series — internal staff development, sector-wide training cohorts, multi-week public courses.

Let’s engage with the people.

Convening and facilitation are how those services land when the room is the work.

A hosted convening is a single occasion designed for the question that brought the room together — a retreat, a dialogue, a town hall, a working session. Sometimes inside one organization, 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. The same questions return; what changes is how they get held.

When the engagement calls for it, the work includes programming from the Palmer Institute — facilitator training, resilience work, the formats the Institute is developing for organizational use.

Let’s engage with each other.

Programmatic partnerships are multi-year engagements where the work is to develop a new institution, program, or capacity over time. Writing and commissions cover essays, reports, and white papers produced for clients. Both come up less often; both are scoped one engagement at a time.