Collaborative planning involves activities we facilitate to understand needs, gaps, opportunities, and assets to help set priorities and plans. Methods that we use include helping to gather and summarize data (e.g., needs assessments, focus groups, in-depth interviews, rapid ethnographic assessments, landscape analysis, asset analysis); audience analysis; and facilitation for goal setting and prioritization, strategic planning, or action research planning.

Capacity building focuses on building partners’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and confidence to do the work/achieve the goals they’re aiming towards. Methods that we use include developing [and delivering] trainings, workshops, and tabletop scenarios in person or online; developing decision-making frameworks, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), job aides, or guides; and/or providing 1:1 technical assistance to work through tasks or scenarios.

Implementation support involves helping partners achieve their goals, perhaps faster than if doing it alone. Methods that we use include developing data collection processes, analyzing data, developing data dashboards or reports, developing GIS maps, conducting project/process/impact evaluation, conducting economic impacts evaluation, developing reports, conducting policy analysis, developing policy recommendations, and developing guidance.

Build powerful collaborations and collective impact. Thus, we take time to foster durable relationships; we ensure early and continuous engagement and meaningful communication to foster trust in people, processes, and outputs; and we respond to community-specific priorities so our work produces data and actions desired by communities.

Unite researchers and context experts to tackle complex issues. Thus, we use participatory approaches to support collaborative processes so that there is equity in decision-making and actions; we approach projects with flexibility, allowing for changes in design and implementation based on discovery, emerging ideas, and community voices; and we invest in collective capacity building to ensure skilled teams who can engage in all aspects of projects.

Engage those with lived experience to play a key role in designing right-fit solutions. Thus, we understand focal communities’ needs, challenges, and motivations; help community members define the issue of focus; support creative ‘brainstorming’ to generate many ideas; facilitate rapid policy assessment to identify feasible and acceptable strategies; and test ideas, gather feedback, and refine/improve concepts based on the real-world context.

Provide a framework to study the factors that facilitate or limit the uptake of evidence-based practices and how those practices contribute to desired outcomes. We integrate multiple methods to understand current practices, barriers, and challenges and ideate novel approaches to test, helping communities find their right-fit solutions.