Approach

Every project is unique. At the beginning of any collaboration, we take time together to define project priorities, desired objectives, and operating parameters. Sometimes these elements are clear at the start. Other times, they emerge from strategic conversations. Mindful of an organization’s staff and board capacity, budget, and timeline, we craft a work approach that engages the right mix of partners at the right times to yield collective buy-in and practical results.  

In communication with you, we regularly assess progress toward project objectives, adapting plans as needed to take advantage of opportunities that arise.

Components of Fine Consulting engagements commonly include:

• Strategic counsel: Candid, confidential, and supportive conversation with a trusted thought partner enables creative problem-solving. We nurture leaders through listening deeply, raising probing questions, and crafting practical ways to move through complexity.

• Data gathering and analysis: Through review of materials, interviews, and focus groups, we build an understanding of an organization, program, or field’s strengths and growth opportunities. We solicit and integrate the perspectives of diverse stakeholders, including those of peer funders and traditionally marginalized communities, to identify a field’s unmet needs and an organization’s distinctive assets and opportunities. 

• Facilitated learning: We design and facilitate convenings of all shapes and sizes — with an organization’s board and staff, across a large institution’s varied program areas, and among multiple foundations or other key stakeholders. We collaborate closely with our partners to make sure that meeting objectives are clear and that meeting design welcomes complexity and courageous conversation. 

• Resource generation and sharing: We routinely produce reports that share findings in accessible, jargon-free ways. We develop grantmaking materials that support a foundation’s particular mission and values. To strengthen donor and field learning, we gather and curate exemplary resources in areas of interest. 

• Field or movement building: Projects initiated by one organization often generate insights relevant to others across a field or movement. We welcome engagements that invite us to share wider lessons through field reports.