Our Services

The Arthritis Research Centre of Canada (ARC) was established in 2000 to advance the tremendous potential of research to improve the lives of people living with bone and joint diseases. ARC first engaged us to provide strategic planning services in 2009, when the Centre’s activities and success in attracting external research funding outgrew the organization’s premises. The ARC Board successfully implemented and monitored the resulting plan, culminating in a new headquarters and steady growth in both funding and research activity.

To maintain this momentum, ARC invited us back in 2012 to help develop a new three-year strategic plan, successfully implemented in 2013 through 2015, when the organization rebranded as Arthritis Research Canada. Now with facilities in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec, ARC continues to grow and demonstrate its dedication to understanding, advancing and sharing knowledge about the causes of arthritis, and addressing issues impacting people with arthritis right now.

We are honoured to have been engaged to work with ARC again, on their subsequent strategic plans in 2016 and 2019. We’ve also assisted with strategic planning for their volunteer colleagues at the Arthritis Patient Advisory Board.

In 2018, we facilitated a consultation process and workshop for the Looking Glass Foundation (LGF) for Eating Disorders, which supports individuals struggling with disordered eating through programs and services that decrease isolation, instill hope, and sustain recovery. Our collaborative work culminated in a strategic plan designed to enhance program and service delivery, diversify funding, increase outreach and awareness, and strengthen governance, human resources, and management infrastructure.

LGF decided to review its strategic plan in 2020, when the pandemic led to the cancellation of their single biggest fundraising event. We facilitated a workshop focused on fiscal sustainability to seek consensus on the organization’s desired future and how to achieve it. We worked with the Executive Director to document workshop outputs, action steps, accountabilities, and timelines.

During the pandemic, demand for LGF services continued to grow, with many supports delivered online and virtually. In April 2021, we facilitated a staff and Board discussion to validate the goals and scope of LGF’s three core programs; explore the impact of program quality and sustainability issues arising due to the pandemic; and identify next steps to move forward successfully in a dynamic environment.

Central City Foundation (CCF) has a strong reputation for community building in Vancouver’s inner city, based on innovative programs that partner with local service providers to address pressing concerns, such as affordable housing, early childhood education, community capacity building, and addictions treatment.

We conducted a comprehensive governance documentation project for CCF in 2019, which included liaising with the Board’s Governance Committee, facilitating a governance training workshop for the Board of Directors, and developing board policies and terms of reference. These included novel policies for Truth and Reconciliation and for Community-focused/led Philanthropy Solutions, which are the core of a CCF Governance Manual we created, based on best practices for leading non-profit boards.

In addition, we engaged in a collaborative strategic planning process with Central City Foundation in 2016 and then renewed the plan with CCF board and staff in 2020. The second planning process included key informant interviews used to produce a Stakeholder Consultation Report that identified strengths, assets, challenges, risks, and priorities to define future success for CCF. This information provided context for the strategic planning workshops, which we facilitated online due to the pandemic. Working with the CCF Board and staff, we produced a new CCF Strategic Plan summarizing multi-year strategic priorities, related objectives and program directions, and targeted outcomes and impact.

In 2020/2021, we worked with Assistance Dogs International, Inc. (ADI), a worldwide coalition of not-for-profit organizations that train and place assistance dogs. Founded in 1986 from a group of seven small programs, ADI has become the leading authority in the assistance dog field around the world, offering a flagship standards program, which provides the basis for ADI’s peer-review accreditation process.

We conducted an environmental scan to inform ADI’s first comprehensive strategic planning process in more than 10 years, a period of operational shifts, organizational changes, and increased membership.

We reviewed ADI documents—annual reports, financial statements, fundraising documents and reports—to gauge the organization’s current state and activities. We interviewed stakeholders to gather views on potential partnerships and on current and future directions for ADI. We conducted confidential online surveys of the ADI Board of Directors and international members to gather their views on the organization’s mission and vision statements, current state, and future priorities.

Our team wrote a context report, ADI Perspectives on Planning, synthesizing the findings from all these processes to support shared understanding for planning. We facilitated four online workshops with the global ADI Board, to support their creation of a visionary multi-year strategic plan.

The University of Northern BC (UNBC) & Northern Health (NH) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in 2010—renewed in 2016 and again in 2018—to collaborate on opportunities to advance and integrate health practice, education and research. The goal of this unique commitment is to improve quality of life and health outcomes for people living in the north.

We worked with UNBC and NH in 2021, facilitating workshops to support a team of representatives from both organizations to update the MOU and its appendices—a three-year Strategic Plan and three-year Action Plan for each of its four strategic priorities.

In addition, we drafted Terms of Reference for the UNBC/NH Steering Committee and four action plan working groups. We continue to support project implementation with the development of resourcing plans and monitoring progress.