Cities & People Advisors partners with organizations to achieve transformational change that addresses structural inequities and systemic oppression and builds power through public sector decision making. We’ve been providing services in research and evaluation, strategic planning, and project design and sustainability for a decade to nonprofits, foundations, institutes of higher learning, and government entities, and we have special expertise in approaches to mitigating the impact of systemic oppression through appointed public sector board and commission processes and policies and open, transparent governance.
Philosophy/Approach: We meet our clients as partners at the intersection of learning, equity, and strategic action for systems change. We are grateful every day that we have the opportunity to do work that is grounded in our values of freedom, dignity, and justice for all people. Our project team members are racially and culturally diverse, and we prioritize providing opportunities for early career Black, Indigenous, and people of color researchers and evaluators to take a mentored and supported leadership role in all of our projects. Our team members have additional lived expertise as queer people, disabled people, working-class and working-poor people, first- and second generation immigrants, and English language learners.
Types of clients: Private foundations, Corporation foundations, Community foundations, Individual donors, Small Nonprofits, Major Nonprofits, Universities
Specialization: We are trained social science researchers who enjoy working with staff, board members, community stakeholders, and others to develop strategy, learning, and dissemination tools such as program evaluations, organizational equity assessments, and program briefs. We are passionate about equity-focused nonprofit organizational development and can provide planning, research, insight, support, and facilitation for such areas as board strategy and development, shared leadership culture development, organizational equity action planning, organizational and program alignment, leadership team development, executive director coaching and mentoring, and change/crisis management. We also enjoy bringing groups together — in real space and virtually — to effectively address societal issues through shared interests or goals, and we have a strong record as a community of practice convener and facilitator. We have content expertise in public decision making, educational equity, gender equity, the built environment, health equity, and environmental justice.