Organizational Development

Assess, Blueprint, Implement

Your organization is an ecosystem that needs to be cared for.

Sometimes when people ask us about organizational wellness and/or organizational development, we’ve got a short answer and a long answer.

Short answer: It’s taking a system-based, solution-focused approach to consulting.

Long answer: When you start struggling to get sleep, doesn’t it affect your mood, thinking patterns, physical energy levels, and more?  Would you want your doctor to just give you a sleeping pill or to also investigate what else might be going on?  When your client tells you about a struggle, don’t you ask questions to learn about and address their environment or social supports?

It’s all interconnected at your organization, too.  You can’t make a financial decision, a tech decision, a grant decision (you get the picture) without it having an impact on clients, programs, and staff. You can’t make a staff, program, or client decision without it affecting your marketing and communication.

And that’s the long story of what we do! Our team will talk with your team to learn about how a particular aspect of your organization is operating, learn about your tools, your spending, your goals, and develop an action-based plan leveraging your team’s current skills and organizational assets that will help you get there.

Book a 15-minute inquiry call with the Org Development Team

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Leadership Empowerment Coaching

Ineffective leadership is one of the leading causes of organizational growing pains.

 
We see this often, and addressing it is a significant first step if the whole organizational development package feels overwhelming. We have seen boards hire an executive director because this person is passionate about the population, but their skill set isn’t where it needs to be. Boards hire someone because their primary skill set is in fundraising, but aspects of management and staff culture suffer.
 
Leadership empowerment coaching is the conscious process of developing individuals’ talents and competencies to work more effectively with others. Leadership empowerment often centers around effective communication skills, business coaching, and understanding the impact of different leadership styles.
 
We’ll work with any leader in your agency for 13 sessions. During the first session, we’ll discuss pain points for you and the agency, and we’ll set a tentative meeting schedule assigning your topics to various sessions. For some sessions, you are welcome to bring other staff to discuss the issues at hand as well.

Grant Strategy

Being strategic about your grants allows you to maintain greater sustainability and independence.  

It also results in better programs and services for your clients. YES – having a strategy results in a more significant impact, which is why it’s something we prioritize when working with our organizational clients.

The basic outline of creating your grant strategy looks like this:

  • Review or develop a strategic plan, precisely the vision for growing or exploring new services.
  • Review or create a current funder calendar. The calendar can include restricted and unrestricted donor funds.
  • Research new funders who can fill in the gaps or address unique needs.
  • Organize agency documentation such as 501(c)3 proof, board of director roster, board-approved annual budget, etc.
  • Logic models drafted for the programs you hope to build or expand.
  • Program budgets drafted for programs that you are hoping to build or expand. 

Why do we need all of this?

Our clients have discovered that by taking these steps, their “stress scramble” is significantly less.  They have a better sense of which program they will apply to first, which funder fits which program, and are able to manage their time better around these tasks.

They’ve also found that when they need to outsource their grant writing, they have everything their grant writer needs to be successful.

As an agency who got their start doing grant writing, we can tell you how tense it gets when we have to keep prompting the hiring agency for documentation or explanations.  Please, please avoid this.

If you decide you need to write the grant yourself, consider using our workbook or self-paced course as resource guides. 

Ready to Win More Grants? Let's Talk

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Grant Feedback Service

Volunteer Florida made our feedback service popular after we led their first grant writing certificate course with over 400 participants! 

Feedback is different than proofing in that our team reviews the material. It provides a rubric that scores the various parts of the proposal you shared with us and the core takeaways your reader needs to ensure a solid submission to your funder. Along with your rubric score, we’ll provide feedback on what you did well and how you can continue to improve the proposal.

Grant Proofing Service

While we can certainly help write your proposal, no one understands your program and agency the way you do. 

Proofing is a service that will check and suggest not only content improvements but techincal things such as grammer and character counts. 

Grant Strategy Workgroups

You are invited to join the Grant Strategy Workgroup, a Kovir Collective Community! 

This space is for you if are writing a grant and/or working on a larger strategy. This group is for novices looking for direction as well as experienced people looking for quality feedback and new ideas. Either way, the purpose of this community is to…

  • Support, motivate, and uplift you in your grant proposal journey
  • Learn about what it is grant proposal writers do
  • Celebrate the grant wins #firstsubmission #awarded
  • Ask your burning questions
  • Give & Receive feedback and tips on the work you’re doing
  • Create networks
  • Access resources

No pitching/promoting/selling/lead capture/free offers will be allowed without prior permission from Kovir. Your community members are your tribe, not potential clients. If you have a solution to a problem you see, help, but don’t include any of your links, and don’t send private messages with your offer. The last thing we want is to create a competitive space. 
 
This community is a place to support, encourage and learn from others! Keep it positive, helpful, and respectful. Personal attacks, trolling, bullying, and abuse don’t belong here (or anywhere!), and anyone with this behavior will be removed. If you don’t think someone is engaging in good faith, report it to us via email instead of responding, and we’ll handle it. Stay focused on professional growth when you’re here! Let’s enjoy this space, encourage each other, band together, and be successful doing what we love!

Websites & Custom Platforms

Build, Hosting, Ongoing Maintenance

We Build with Human-Centered Design. Period.

You can read about the standard process of building in the milestones below, but let’s talk about a few terms.

Hosting is where your website lives.  Websites actually live on servers, along with the data on or submitted to the website.

Domains are the address for the website.  Sometimes they look like an “IP Address” (199.00.000.00), but much more commonly they look like a URL (https://kovir.org).

Security Certificates (SSL) is seen as a lock before the URL and/or the “s” in “https.”   

UI – User interface is about the structure and design of something – anything!  A plane, a building, and yes, your website.

UX – User experience is a newer term used only for digital spaces and it is founded on the concept of human centered design (akin to person-centered work).  User experience is about the journey, the feelings, the desire to come back.  

We consider all of this when designing your site.  We’ll add features and plugins where it will be helpful, and we will remove things that are causing negative experiences for your interface.

We also like to have your users test out the site and provide feedback.  We’ve found that getting the ideal user USING the space just makes sense but is often skipped.

And finally, we run a complimentary ADA compliance and accessibility test on your dreams-come-true site.  Inclusion is high on our values, and in some cases it’s the law – either way, we have you covered.

Website Revamp

 

You already know your site needs some TLC – we’d love to work with you and make some efficient suggestions on the way.

 

You can read about our Human-Centered Design approach above. Here are some milestones to expect in this process:
 

  • Step 1: Establish your dedicated team of stakeholders
  • Step 2: Audit your current site (waived if you don’t have a site!)
  • Step 3: Understand the user journey
  • Step 4: Set goals
  • Step 5: Define your strategy
  • Step 6: Setting a timeline
  • Step 7: Review and update (or create) your brand style guide
  • Step 8: Gather inspiration and analyze the competition
  • Step 9: Craft your content
  • Step 10: Start designing
  • Step 11: Develop your site
  • Step 12: Launch your new site!
  • Step 13: Train Your Team