Welcome to The Collaboratory, LLC!
We’re a mission-driven consultancy whose thought partnership and practical support helps organizations and communities deliver meaningful impact.
How We Help
It takes a lot to do the incredible work you do. The results you’re aiming toward require you to understand context, set direction and strategy, mobilize people and resources, and guide initiatives to completion and success — often all at the same time. It’s no surprise you may need an occasional assist. Fortunately, help is on the way. These are services in which we excel, tailoring support to what’s most useful for your situation. Think of The Collaboratory as your custom Swiss Army Knife — providing just what you need in the moment. As detailed below, our services fall into four related categories: productive collaboration, actionable insight & strategic planning, project stewardship, and systems transformation & capacity building.
Collaboration & Collective Impact
The issue you care about can't be solved by your organization alone — you want to engage with stakeholders to align priorities, resources, and action to achieve greater impact.
Your work is part of a larger ecosystem, interconnected to many other players and issues — productive collaboration with key stakeholders is essential. You need well-crafted engagement that builds shared understanding, workable solutions, and partnerships that are truly greater than the sum of their parts. This type of engagement is a core area of The Collaboratory’s expertise. We’ve convened hundreds of stakeholders to address a broad range of issues. Thought leadership includes an article on the topic for The Journal of Community Development and a dissertation on multistakeholder collaboration based on initiatives led.
Actionable Insight & Strategic Planning
You need grounded reconnaissance to inform decisions, and a strategy process that inspires and guides.
Whether assessing an issue or opportunity or revisiting vision and strategy, robust information is key to understanding context and clarifying what matters most. Reconnaissance done well provides actionable insight about the existing conditions and also helps you see what’s on the horizon. Moving to vision and strategy, you seek a process that generates a clear North Star, roadmap forward, and the commitments needed for successful implementation. The Collaboratory brings to this work decades of experience defining generative questions, delivering actionable insight, and developing visions and strategies that have impact.
Project Stewardship
Bringing strategies to life you need someone that can hold the big picture while managing details that ensure projects are resourced and moving toward results.
Resourcing your great ideas may require a compelling and competitive proposal for investment or innovative funding strategies, while implementation may benefit from thoughtful project design or a steady hand coordinating actors, timelines, and deliverables to keep work on track. The Collaboratory understands that resourcing and managing projects can be a challenge — particularly when you’re short on bandwidth. Seeing the forest and the trees, we assist with these and other details while keeping sight of your larger vision.
Systems Transformation & Capacity Building
Fresh approaches to learning, adaptation, and change would strengthen your work — you want a clear place to start.
In a world that’s increasingly complex and uncertain, you understand the need for a few more tools in your toolbox. You’re curious about the mindsets, skills, and habits that can help your team navigate these conditions and strengthen impact. Informed by training in transformational learning and systems change, The Collaboratory curates exploration and practice that enhances capacity to do your important work. We also have deep expertise at the intersection of environmental, social, and economic well-being for those seeking opportunities for multi-solving and system benefit. Thought leadership in this area includes one of Economic Development Quarterly’s most read articles.
Learn More & Connect
Discover more about us, including some of our past projects and testimonials about our work.
We look forward to learning about your endeavors and exploring how to support your work! Connect with us here.