Visioning and Strategic Planning

• Engaged the Board, staff and community in developing a five year strategic plan targeted to increase food security in one of the most economically distressed urban areas in the nation. In one year, the organization increased food distribution by 14% supported by a 9% increase in corporate giving and a 100% boost in grant funding, The organization's strategic commitment to build internal capacity resulted in a 26% improvement in employee engagement in the agency's vision, goals and strategies.
• Supported a nonprofit management support organization in the re-creation of the organization through a Board led review of national best practices and a visioning process. The new vision realigned the organization into four high impact service areas. Major foundation grants to this MSO have increased significantly since the plan was adopted. The organization is now positioned to generate revenue from the sales of service models and tools that have been developed and tested locally.
• Engaged the Board, staff and community members of a District Library in developing a progressive and practical five year strategic plan. One year after adopting the strategic plan, active users of the library increased by 25%, program attendance increased 35% and targeted outreach resulted in a circulation increase of 7.4% to previously underserved populations.

Collaboration for Social Change

• Guided the development of an alliance with eleven nonprofit agencies and their cross-sector board, strengthening and enabling them to lead the community in developing a plan to end homelessness.
  The Alliance now is a 25 member organization of both nonprofit and government agencies. The Alliance has demonstrated a capacity to engage the community and to commit to shared standards. These cultivated attributes have helped them secure significant state funding awards and a major foundation grant. Work is now under way to access more housing units along with the services needed to ensure stability for the tenants.
• Conducted a vigorous public engagement effort in the midst of a threatened class action lawsuit against a city-owned utility through the facilitation of a staff and citizen led task force.
  The final Task Force recommendation for a $100 million infrastructure investment was unanimously approved by City Council. The agreed upon technical solution has allowed the municipality to be well ahead of now mandated state and federal regulations.
• Engaged customers and staff in analyzing the effectiveness and impact on household food security of a 'client choice' emergency food pantry.
  Impact statements by customers are being shared with funding partners and findings of the analysis are being used to drive the designs of new client choice pantries in two neighboring communities.
• Guided a partnering process, negotiating a $1.1 billion rate agreement between a major utility and 23 separate communities.
  Via a series of facilitated partnering sessions and in depth committee work on technical, legal and financial issues, the process helped avoid expensive, disruptive litigation, giving the Utility and the communities a way to develop and implement a cooperative plan to improve water quality.

Organizational Development

• Facilitated the merger of two business units into a cohesive single operation with a common mission.
  All 300 members of the combined organization identified strategic priorities. Teams were formed to address critical business issues and to identify opportunities. Within 18 months, this organization met or exceeded all major business goals, including a sales increase of 11%, and profit improvement of 14%.
• Supported the organizational redesign of an Information Technology department that was struggling to complete projects on time and within budget.
  The budget of the new department provides an annual savings of $1million for the organization with customer and employee satisfaction scores increasing consistently in the four years following implementation.
• Developed a systematic customer engagement process for the fleet operations of a major automotive manufacturer.
  This process continues to be central to the operations of the manufacturer eight years after its design. The fleet organization is now ranked as 'best place to buy' in a third party survey of customers.