Strategy

Services: Strategy

 

Knowing where you want to go is essential to getting there, but it can be hard to choose among different destinations that each hold value. Harder still is knowing when and how to change course along the way, while keeping your ultimate destination in mind. We collaborate closely with the right institutional partners to articulate ambitious priorities, mindful of organizational capacity and timeline, while remaining responsive to environmental shifts.  

Strategy services include: 

Facilitating strategy development 

  • Designing participatory strategic planning processes

  • Guiding mission, vision, and values development

  • Supporting organizational positioning 

  • Articulating a Theory of Change

  • Crafting strategic scenarios

  • Developing and refining new program areas 

  • Facilitating board and staff learning and consensus

  • Writing strategic plans

Gathering and assessing data

  • Conducting environmental scans 

  • Facilitating community input processes

  • Assessing grantmaking approaches and operational systems

  • Conducting formative or outcome assessment of programs

Ensuring effective implementation

  • Providing implementation rubrics

  • Developing governance roles and structures 

  • Providing effective models for grantmaking, advocacy, convening, and capacity building 

 
 

Select project examples: 

  • Conducted strategic planning for New England’s largest institutional funder of K-12 education, helping to center racial equity across mission, vision, values, grantmaking targets and strategies, and community participation practices.

  • Facilitated strategic planning for a Denver-based community foundation, embedding equity across all foundation practices, fostering cohesion across programs, and aligning board and donors behind an equity agenda. 

  • Provided program strategy services for the women’s rights program of a global human rights foundation, guiding staff in refining priorities, aligning work across portfolios, and amplifying efforts to accelerate the foundation’s overall investments in intersectional gender justice. 

  • Led grantmaking and advocacy strategy for a national pooled donor collaborative, aligning local site and national grantmaking, convening, strategic communications, and capacity building for grassroots organizations and alliances.

 
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Melinda is a tremendous thought-partner; she listens deeply and asks the right questions, and she is a powerful analytic and strategic thinker. Her guidance and skilled facilitation helped our organization identify where we needed to go to best serve the Greater Denver community in our next chapter AND craft a plan to get there. Thanks to her partnership and expert guidance, we now have strong alignment between our compellingly refreshed organizational values, mission, vision; our strategic objectives to advance equity, justice, inclusion and resources in our region; and the internal coherence required to deliver on our commitments and elevate our impact. The true test of a strategic plan is how it holds up under unforeseen circumstances, and we are grateful that our partnership with Melinda yielded the lenses, road map and flexibility that has helped us navigate our 2020 response to COVID-19 and racial justice opportunities. It was, simply put, one of the most rewarding and productive partnerships we have had with a consultant.

~ Lindy Eichenbaum Lent, President and CEO, Rose Community Foundation