Education & Early Childhood

Sound strategy is grounded in a deep understanding of your core purpose, capacity to achieve change, and collaborative relationships with others. From diverse perspectives on your education work, we help you clarify your mission, vision, and values—then we collaboratively chart the course to realize your goals.

We’re often engaged to evaluate education programs or initiatives. All our evaluation services take a customized approach—using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods—to harness evaluation and learning for your diverse stakeholders. We provide actionable insights and build internal capacity to carry on learning efforts.

Along with strong leadership, sound management, effective tools, adaptability, and a values-driven culture, accomplishing your goals takes collaborative muscle. We help you identify your strengths and opportunities for growth to determine how you can best partner with others working in education to achieve your shared aims.

We work with education-focused funders on a wide variety of giving programs. Our experienced staff members design, develop, implement, and manage grantmaking efforts. We help you administer grants efficiently, communicate with grantees and grantseekers, and align your grantmaking with other funder objectives.

Tackling complex issues in education demands integrated action, informed by deep listening, intentional engagement, critical analysis, and bold approaches. To help you achieve your goals for lasting impact, we design integrated initiatives: strategic endeavors that meaningfully choreograph multiple program components and are responsive to community needs.

Relationships are essential for impact. We help you build authentic, expansive, and productive relationships with the stakeholders critical to your work in education. We begin with stakeholder mapping, plan your strategy for engagement, identify the touchpoints for ongoing and fruitful partnership, and bolster feedback loops.

At all stages of your education work—designing a complex initiative, embarking on an organizational change in direction, or creating a suite of materials—strategic communication is essential. We create communication plans that make your voice heard, identifying your messages, messengers, audiences, and channels.

An engaged and effective board helps ensure you’re achieving your mission. We work with organizations of all sizes, helping define the role of the board and advising on issues of its composition, structure, tenure, performance, and sustainability.

Surface the hypotheses and assumptions underpinning your work. How will you get from here to your goals? We lay out the steps by which your work will lead to impact in the education landscape. Articulating a Theory of Change and indicators of success are essential to establishing a shared vision for priorities, evaluation, partnerships, and resources.

We have deep experience with organizations working in the education field. We map the key players, relationships, and trends essential for your unique mission. We collect data and connect you to the perspectives of diverse actors—including those most impacted within the community. We help you find the most effective ways you can make a difference.