Core Knowledge Areas
We have knowledge and experience in a number of social issues areas, including:
We partner with organizations to achieve transformational change that addresses structural inequities and systemic oppression and builds power for public sector decisionmaking.
EQUITY-FOCUSED RESEARCH AND EVALUATION
We are trained social science researchers who enjoy working with staff, board members, community stakeholders, and others to develop strategy, learning, and dissemination tools such as program evaluations, organizational equity assessments, and program briefs to answer questions and guide organizational actions. We partner with you to produce accessible and useful recommendations, case studies, issues briefs, and other items to support your decision making, and we have a strong network of designers and data visualization experts that support us in making sure we are bringing information to you in ways that you can put into practice immediately.
“I highly recommend Cities & People as an experienced evaluation consultant for government or community based organizations. C&P has an experienced group of experts competently working with the various moving pieces of evaluating a program or organization, the data analysis and producing well-written beautiful reports. We especially appreciated C&P working around our busy schedules and reworking timelines several times to meet critical deadlines yet leave enough space to produce a high level report. Our funders were pleased with the various measurement tools C&P helped us design, the quality of the report and especially the executive summary, which made it easy to engage.”
— Andrew Park, Executive Director, Trybe
Organizational & COALITION Development
We are passionate about equity-focused nonprofit organizational development and can provide planning, research, insight, support, and facilitation for such areas as board strategy and development, shared leadership culture development, organizational equity action planning, organizational and program alignment, leadership team development and coaching, and executive director coaching and mentoring.
“The team at Cities & People Advisors were wonderful to work with during a recent one-year engagement with our placed-based grantees. They were highly skilled, flexible, reliable, and showed a true commitment to operationalizing equity throughout the project. Their ability to build trusting, clear relationships with our partners and convey feedback was invaluable. I learned a lot from their approach. It was a pleasure to work with them!”
— Liz Gregor, Neighborhoods Ready for School Program Administrator, First 5 Alameda County
PROJECT DESIGN
Based on research, experience, and relationships, we partner with you to design programs that systematically address structural inequities and systems of oppression. We can work within your existing organizational resources to develop a project “from scratch” and take it through pilot, including developing recommendations for the next iteration. We can also work with your existing programs to provide or strengthen authentic alignment with diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, and are happy to work with your staff to build their competencies to deliver the redesign.
“We engaged Cities & People in the winter of 2023 to support us in facilitating a yearlong planning process to provide a ‘sacred space’ to our community partners. The goals were to both help the teams process their experiences of working through COVID and to share their goals to ensure the families, children and providers in their respective neighborhoods had access to critical services and resources. It was to be an opportunity to review and redefine their visions for the next four years. Another desired outcome was to our agency reflect upon our role and impact as a partner, convener, collaborator and funder. What we learned about our partners and ourselves isn’t new or revolutionary. It was, however, confirmation that inviting and truly listening to community voices to inform our processes and plans is essential in developing and implementing responsive, culturally concordant resources, and strong and sustained partnerships. I appreciate the care in which Cities & People curated a process to build upon the existing work, while allowing space to discover and share what else was needed to do the work about which we all care so deeply. While it was challenging and imperfect (as most organic and intentional processes are!), the final products were thoughtful and authentic. The Cities & People team was adept in holding both the needs of our community partners and that of the agency. We continue to be a work in progress but are much better for having spent this time together.”
— Carla Keener, Community Programs Director, First 5 Alameda County
Strategic Planning
We love working with clients and their program stakeholders to articulate theories of change and put strong plans into action to make those theories real. We can work with you to design a strategic planning approach that makes the most use of your organization’s time and other resources and that is centered on your mission, vision, and values. As part of this process, we will provide you with simple, practical documentation to put your plan to work, and we can even support your managers in aligning their team-member work plans with the resulting strategic plan.
Meetings, Trainings, and Convenings
We enjoy bringing groups together — in real space and virtually — to effectively address societal issues through shared interests or goals, and we have a strong record as a community of practice convener and facilitator, particularly for geographically dispersed stakeholders with imperfectly aligned interests and motivations. We develop strong, participant-centered curriculum and can facilitate associated trainings or train your staff to do so. We can also work with you to design and facilitate productive, interesting retreats and other types of internal convenings for your staff and board.
“Hosting 2+ hour learning sessions through Zoom and keep everyone engaged with valuable information is no easy feat but they managed to do it with such grace! I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and would definitely work with them again in the future!”
— Dar'rell Jones, Career Pathways Coordinator, BLU Educational Foundation
“Cities & People provides high-quality content and engaging webinars. Their thoughtful approach creating a strong community space was the highlight our partners shared with us. The Cities & People team delivered the skills our team needed to engage our partners meaningfully while providing technical assistance. I am beyond happy with their services and look forward to working with them again in the future.”
— Esmeralda Marcial, Manager of External Relations, EdTrust-West