The day-to-day work and interactions are fueled by the same world-views as our individual lives. At the core of our work is the belief that leaving behind something that matters is a thoughtful, passionate process moderated by common sense and best business practices.
We are fighters. We don’t give up, love a good challenge, and believe that every problem contains within its solution. In order to find it, we are prepared to go as far as our partners are willing to go.
We focus 100% of our strategy services towards enhancing the greater good + we donate a sizable percentage of our profits + we volunteer a significant amount of time in the community. That is our 3-prong Double Bottom Line approach. To that, we add our Triple Bottom Line strategy: we have created a paper-free work environment and we aim to minimize waste and the amount of CO2 we generate by driving less and less often, and by having our staff telecommute almost 100% of the time. On top of that, many of our meetings are walking meetings (as opposed to sitting meetings, coffee meetings, or lunch meetings).
We hold our anti-harassment policies at eye level with a particular focus on safeguarding and respecting the rights of all staff, clients, and collaborators. We embrace the ambiguity and challenges of coexistence that come with the intersectionality of race, disability, transgender, and other identities. We reject all manners of racial intolerance, gender-based discrimination, and sexual harassment. We will not stay quiet regardless of context, we will investigate incidents, and if necessary, defend and protect with all available recourse (from legal action, to public exposure and everything in between).
This is the bedrock of all we do. We know it takes courage for a youth or a family to ask for help. It takes courage for a donor to divert time and dollars to create change. To tackle big issues like Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, education or poverty, it takes courage, bold questioning, and hours of elbow grease in the service of the unknown. This is the essential element needed to create social change, to weather the risk of grant investments, to work with people tenacious enough to do what needs to be done. We believe that courage in all its forms should be recognized and respected, and we endeavor to live each day bravely.
Our creativity and pragmatic solutions are rooted in practiced systems that create consistent results.
We are gatekeepers for our clients and place their trust in us on the highest level of importance. Confidentiality and a tactful approach are fundamental to our work.
Whatever crowd we curate in any given context, it better look like the United Nations. From our team, to our Fellows and the clients we work with, we purposefully aim for as broad of a range of cultural, racial, and gender representation. Not because it is fashionable, humanistic, politically correct, or for that matter, “the right thing to do”. We court and embrace diversity because we get better results when we bring together diverse backgrounds and points of view.
Fanatic about form and delivery, we believe that quality products, processes and outcomes deserve an equally top-notch packaging. Details matter.
We believe that hard work should be valued and acknowledged at all levels. We give credit where credit is due, create space for healthy collaboration, and keep our ego out of the game.
Never too wedded to our own ideas, we bend, learn, and adapt. And every now and then, we try not to take ourselves too seriously.
While it might not look that way because we take on a lot in a given year, there is actually much we don’t do because we choose to focus supremely on that which we can execute really well. There is also elegance and depth in laser-like focus. We work with intent. We aim for the extraordinary, for bold, for planetary level impact, and that requires us to become masters of exclusion, and astute navigators of partnerships.
This is what kicks in when the last contract deliverable has been handed over and all the boxes have been ticked off. It is about giving more than you receive, thus creating a new stream of value for all involved.
We’ll always say it like it is and, if it ever happens, own our failures.
We put people first and listen to that which isn’t expressed. Complex solutions to complex issues require a steady influx of trusting one’s gut while relaying on data and solid processes.
We are brokers of change. Power is energy and energy is the foundation of everything. We believe in a social sector that moves away from the wallflower attitudes of the past, a sector that is ready to embrace it’s own greatness, capital, and transformative potential. We believe that when you are ready to look for what’s “cutting edge”, the surest way to find it, is to create the edge, to be IT. We believe in the power of YES.
This is both about the search for exponential curves that can be used to create change, and about the scale of results we are aiming for. We routinely add a zero to our qualitative and quantitative goals, and encourage the people we work with to do the same. 10X goals require 10X levels of action, and hard, hard work. We look for 10X partners and for that which is clearly, on the hard road. Our 10X vision also means that at regular intervals we are outside of our comfort zone, and that is just perfect.