How We Do It
As in any industry, there are certain tools and processes that come together to develop the “product”. At Community Solutions, we use organizational assessments that are customized to your operations to help determine who your customers are, who you want them to be, what they need, and whether you have the infrastructure and resources to meet those needs. Many times additional resources are needed. Community Solutions is skilled at identifying private and public grant resources that are aligned with the work of your organization and developing funding requests that communicate your message, your capacity, and your ability to achieve the results the funder is interested in.
One of our key beliefs is that through cross sector collaboration, the impact that organizations can have on their communities is enhanced — and these collaborations have to be developed though powerful conversations. As highly skilled facilitators, we are able to bring diverse groups to consensus and build aligned actions and commitments. The facilitation framework that we use is focused on achieving results and is supported by sophisticated documentation that allows groups to build off of each conversation – and not repeat conversations. By having a neutral presence “running the room” you are able to be a full participant in building the collaboration to achieve your desired result.
But how do you know if you reached that result? At Community Solutions we can help you design and implement program and system evaluations that will help you measure your progress and your outcomes – and we are committed that this evaluation process is integrated into the work that you do. This may consist of on line surveys, focus groups, key interviews, data base analysis, or any combination of these things. Our focus is not only on being able to do this for you, but also on building the capacity of your organization to always know: “Are we achieving our result?”.
All of these tools come together to ensure that we can meet the needs of our clients – which allows them to meet the needs of their clients.