Strategic plans usually fail on delivery; we don’t drop off reports and walk away. Our team sits alongside your leadership to co-design strategy, clarify decision rights and build governance rhythms that stick. Having sat in CEO and Board Chair seats ourselves, we make the tough calls with you so your team has real buy-in and complete clarity on what’s next.
Over-reliance on a single funder leaves mission-driven organizations vulnerable to sudden policy shifts and abrupt budget cuts. We help you build steady revenue that survives a bad year or a funder changing its mind. That means several live income streams: government funding, earned revenue, tiered memberships and co-investment models. From mapping government opportunities to framing winning proposals, we build durable revenue models so your organization can sustain its impact.
Decision-makers form views about your organization whether you are in the room or not (and they share them more honestly when you’re not). We conduct candid perception reviews to show you how funders and officials truly see you. You get an honest read on what matters most. We use those insights to encourage open dialogue, sharpen your narrative, and build relationships before the ask.
We facilitate strategic planning with regional and national organizations, aligning leadership and boards around a new direction. Every plan comes with concrete steps to get there and the metrics to know whether it is working.
We hold the quiet, honest conversations with funders, partners and members that surface the feedback organizations will never get directly. Clients get a clear read on what is said when they are not in the room, plus concrete recommendations for becoming the partner they cannot do without.
We build funding strategies and pitches that get bold new ideas backed, aligning the ask with what funders are actually trying to achieve. That covers the investment case, the evidence base and a strategic engagement roadmap for who to approach, in what order, with what ask.
We help mission-driven organizations build diversified revenue portfolios that sustain their work for the long term. That means laying the groundwork to renew existing funding while building earned revenue, membership, sponsorship and partnership models that hold when a grant cycle ends.
We design the systems, processes, governance, staffing plans and programs that carry organizations through periods of rapid growth and change. We work as an embedded partner, adding capacity and strategic direction while the organization grows into a new mandate.
We align boards and executive teams after a leadership change or a new mandate, setting the decision rights, the reporting rhythms and the accountability that outlast the people who agreed to them.
We enable mission-driven organizations to build durable relationships inside the public service, where many decisions are shaped long before they reach a minister. That means knowing how departments actually work, who carries a file, how to manage a funding relationship once you have one, and how to hold it through a change in government.
We craft the narratives, platforms and relationships that raise an organization's profile and win support for what it is trying to achieve. The goal is to become the trusted voice that government, media and industry invite in for input on the issues that matter, backed by the core story and the speaking, media and stakeholder work that carries it.
We gather and build the evidence that shows what an organization's work has actually changed for the members it serves, the sector it sits in and the communities around it, combining your performance data with candid conversations across your network and benchmarking against wider industry trends.
WATERLOO | OTTAWA | NEW YORK
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