Community holds the answer.
We hold the space.
Bilingual, English and Spanish, community-centered research and co-design that brings lived experience into the decisions that shape social impact programs, services, and strategy.
Working across the U.S. South, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
THE PROBLEM WE HEAR
Social impact organizations make
important decisions that affect communities but
don’t always have the
time, capacity, or context to involve the people closest to the outcome.
When decisions aren’t grounded in real insight and authentic collaboration,strong ideas and good intentions fall short.
CONSEQUENCE 1
Assumptions replace reality.
Teams design for who they imagine, not who's actually there.
CONSEQUENCE 2
Programs miss the mark.
You can launch without community, but you lose the connection and knowledge needed to adapt, grow, and be effective in your mission.
CONSEQUENCE 3
Trust breaks down.
When community input feels like an afterthought, the trust required to create sustainable change and innovation disappears.
OUR SOLUTION
We help organizations move beyond dashboards and data about communities to meaningful partnership with community members to decide what's ahead.
WHO WE WORK WITH
Organizations shaping futures that aren’t their own
Whether you're allocating funding, launching a program, or building a product, the same risk shows up: decisions made without direct community input cost more, financially, logistically and relationally, to fix later than to get right upfront.
We help you seek and leverage community perspectives and turn the conversations into evidence you can use to advocate for your strongest needs.
01
Are you a large nonprofit or
social business?
We help you see what your dashboard can't show you.
Surveys, intake forms, climate surveys and dashboards capture parts of what's happening, not why. We work alongside your team to interpret what you already have and hear from the people you exist to support.
THE RESULT
Turn existing data into funding leverage
Move from abundant data with no backstory to connected narratives and relationships that become part of organizational memory and strategy shapers.Avoid the cost of a program that doesn’t address the real needs
The cost of redesigning or relaunching a program that doesn’t authentically serve your community is much higher than asking how to get it right before launching.
Document needs in a way funders can act on
Build organizational awareness of diverse community needs and evidence that directs funding toward the pilots and programs you want.Build capacity to connect more deeply with your community
Improve organizational skill in bringing community members into decisions, so the practice stays after our engagement ends .
02
Are you a design or
innovation firm?
We help you add bilingual and trauma informed senior-level research capacity.
When a project involves designing for social change, we integrate into your team and independently support rigorous human-centered design research without adding more management burden.
THE RESULT
Lower your delivery risk on engagements
Reduce the equity missteps that produce low adoption and participant mistrustBroaden who your work works for
Design with confidence for users whose experiences differ from your team's.Expand what you can pitch and deliver
Pitch bilingual, trauma-informed research to win work immediately and bring vetted social work and trauma-informed practice into your process.
Rooted in the U.S. South, Latin America, and the Caribbean
By working with organizations across “The South”, we connect places that share generations of movement, cultural exchange, creativity, and history. We are dedicated to engagements that directly impact and engage communities across these places.
Working somewhere else and think we're a fit? Write us! We'd love to see if we or someone in our network can help.
SELECTED IMPACT
Improved family economic-security policy and services
Project
Trauma-informed research design and facilitation for multi-year study on lived experiences of families with young children as they navigated childcare, community safety, and family instability.
Impact
The work supported policy advocacy and helped lay the foundation for the rollout of child care system redesign nationally.
Strengthened language access for 1,000+ students and families
Project
Service-design research for language support services in a multicultural school district.
Impact
Expanded multilingual communications, approved investment for family-school communication platform supporting 12 languages, and dedicated funding for interpretation services for district meetings.
"I've relied on her for ensuring our work is ethical and accessible — from contributing to our organization's trauma-informed research practice guidelines, to graciously staying longer after a workshop so a participant had time to share their story around extremely difficult experiences. Her ability to work with Spanish-speaking communities has also enriched our findings."
— Jessica Weeden, Design Lead, New Practice Lab
LET’S GET STARTED
Two ways to partner.
Whether you know you want to take your community listening deeper, but you’re not sure how or you know exactly what needs to be done and just need capacity to execute, we’d love to help.
NEED STRATEGY?
The Listening Reset
Listening Strategy Audit + Accompanied Redesign
Have you started community listening in some way already?
Community conversations are on the calendar, data is piling up, you have spaces to hear from a few individuals you serve. Still, the line from what you're hearing to what you should do with it isn't clear yet. And you feel you’re not reaching everyone you need to.
We look at what you already have, diagnose what's stalling, and build a new approach you can run to sustain connection and create momentum for action.
NEED CAPACITY?
The Capacity Boost
Embedded + Experienced Research Partnership
Do you have a plan you are excited about but feel short on the team needed to execute?
The community is involved, the funding is there. You just need help from someone who “gets” this kind of work.
We help deliver facilitation, analysis, strategy or, a combination, bringing clinical training and bilingual capacity most design teams don't have in-house.
FIND YOUR STARTING POINT
How well does your team turn community listening into action?
Take this 5-minute assessment to see where you’re well-positioned and what to do about where you’re not.