Services

Working Partner helps clients move from ideas to action and action to results through four core practice areas.

As Strategy advisors, we create and help implement plans that translate ideas into strategic action, generating the policy and structural changes needed to deliver results. Our Capacity Building practice guides our clients through a comprehensive analysis of current readiness, capabilities and structure, and creates a blueprint for organizational improvement and trainings aimed at ensuring long term effectiveness and relevance. Our Evaluation work supports our partners in ensuring progress toward goals, by identifying and measuring critical markers of success.  Lastly, as experienced community organizers we help clients build valuable partnerships and meaningful Community Engagement.

Our Approach

Our name signals how we approach every client relationship. We start with an understanding of your goals then actively contribute—research, analysis, strategy, energy and experienced outside perspective—to build your organization’s capacity for success. We work as an extension of your team, collaborate seamlessly with your collaborators and share your passion for the mission.

Working Partner values equity, diversity, and inclusion and is intentional about engaging the voices and perspectives of people of color and those with less privilege in all our work. While every engagement is as different as our partners are, our work is characterized by common guiding principles, values, and beliefs:

• We aim to work with organizations dedicated to social and/or racial justice. We contribute to their efforts through with high-quality, creative, and collaborative facilitation, evaluation, strategy, and engagement approaches and tools.
• We believe in human potential and that the potential of communities of color has been systematically blocked. Thus, we seek and create opportunities to evaluate and strategize pathways with and for communities of color to build systems that advance racial equity and close the opportunity gap for underserved and marginalized communities.
• We value and encourage diverse perspectives. Within our organization and together with our clients and partners, we seek and include diverse perspectives at all levels of work and decision-making and foster a collaborative work culture where staff and partners are welcomed, respected, and meaningfully engaged.
• We are more than culturally responsive evaluators; we care equally and deeply about building local capacity and the local evidence base. Throughout all our projects, we aim to build or deepen the capacity of our clients and partners to evaluate their efforts, tell their stories, and shift the narrative to inform advocacy around their goals.
• We believe that evaluation and strategy learnings should support our clients and partners in taking action. Their knowledge, experiences, and aspirations are the foundation for our work, and we are committed to sharing and presenting what we learn in ways that are most useful to them.
• We are lifelong learners and are always seeking opportunities to strengthen our efforts as individuals and consultants to serve as valuable contributors to our clients/partner’s work, and as change agents in the work to advance equity and economic, gender, racial, and social justice.

All Working Partner staff are members of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and are guided by AEA’s Guiding Principles and Statement on Cultural Competence.