Our communities pulse with abundant potential — residents bring their creativity and lived experience, nonprofits offer passion and dedication, and businesses bring a desire to improve their communities. When these strengths combine, communities can tackle pressing challenges from a position of power.
We work to bridge these gifts to unlock community-driven change.
We envision thriving neighborhoods where citizens bring their gifts to co-create the future and bring aliveness to their community.
Facilitate innovation programs that empower residents and community partners to harness their collective creativity and build thriving neighborhoods
Lasting change emerges when residents create their own solutions and shape their communty's future.
Cross-sector partners bring diverse experiences and skills to create new possibilities and mutual value.
Complex challenges require diverse gifts and creative approaches to create enduring change.
LIFT Collaborative is a 'backbone organization' that connects and facilitates people and cross-sector partners to co-create enduring community solutions. So we don't set strategy or recommend solutions - that's the role of the partnership. We focus on facilitating change programs so that communities and cross-sector partners can focus on what they do best.
Assemble a team of diverse, cross-sector partners committed to change
Partners connect to clarify the challenge and prioritize work ...
Clarify the ambition, the issues, and what's been done
Assemble a diverse team committed to change
Prioritize key issues and align on the project scope
Frame the challenge as "How might we ... ?"
Facilitate a series of innovation 'sprints' to explore possibilities and co-create solutions
Teams bring curiosity, creativity, and collaboration to ...
(re)Frame the challenge to ask the right question
Explore new possibilities and opportunity spaces
Create ideas and prototypes, and develop viable solutions
Develop a robust strategy for change
Provide backbone support to track projects, maintain focus and share learning
We utilize and maintain a program backbone to ...
Track and share project progress via an online portal
Manage project documents and training materials
Capture and communicate learning to build momentum
Share learning within and across communities
Over the past 20 years our human-centered approach has shifted how nonprofits serve and operate, and created bottom-line impact for corporations. While the nature of the challenges is very different, the best approach to help teams solve complex challenges is very similar.
That approach balances the relational and the rational. Relationship brings teams together to create empathetic, inclusive community solutions. Rigor brings clarity to strategy and the ecosystems that teams operate in to create sustainable solutions with real impact.
Intention creates the conditions for a foundation for the work and team. We Set Initial Conditions for teams to see the context they work within and reveal their genius, Slow Down to Go Fast to explore deeply the issues to reveal hidden truths, and Make the Invisible Visible to reveal non-obvious possibilities and speed bumps.
Compassion reveals our innate human capacities to see opportunities and reveal solutions. We Hear all Voices to reveal experiences and gifts, See with New Eyes to explore and understand new perspectives, and Fall in Love with who we serve and the challenge we embrace.
Connection unleashes our collective intelligence to bring possibilities to life. Together, we Nurture Self-Discovery to empower learning to create better solutions, Jump into Ambiguity to explore undiscovered territories, and Share Stories to reveal deeper meaning.
We are a startup nonprofit seeking partnerships with organizations committed to sharing power in community change efforts. If that's you, let's connect to understand how we might work together. We'll determine if we are a good fit for partnership and then imagine and clarify goals for our work together.
