Our Approach
Our approach to capacity building is grounded in the values of liberation and social transformation. We bring a deep bench of skills, organizing experience, and abiding love and support for our movements. Here is what makes our capacity building shop unique:
We engage across every social justice movement
We have worked with hundreds of social justice organizations across movements, which has resulted in deep cross-movement relationships and expertise. This resulting broad and complex perspective gives us a “bird’s eye view” across movements, through which we can most effectively troubleshoot, strategize, and build power collectively.
We support movement work at every level
In these times of generational transition—coupled with the roll back of long-fought for rights and intensified efforts to dismantle our fledgling democracy—RoadMap brings a long history and deep bench to support movement work at every level, from small grassroots teams to larger multi-issue organizations and those associated with philanthropies.
We engage an intersectional lens to help organizations with their pain points
We begin with an intentional intake process to understand an organization’s needs, challenges, and opportunities. We then engage our consultant network to assess capacity and availability in order to pair organizations with the consultants who are best positioned to address pain points and ignite change. Our deep bench of consultants knows how to work with movement organizations and leaders to identify organizational gaps, challenges, and opportunities. In tandem with our consultants, we develop a customized scope of work—including project phases and deliverables—that strategically and directly addresses the biggest questions and developmental challenges organizations face.
We help our consultant network thrive so they can help clients thrive
We believe that our clients are best served by a thriving ecosystem rooted in—and fortified by—the care, trust, and collaboration inherent in nurtured, values-aligned relationships. A crucial part of our work involves creating opportunities for our consultant ecosystem to connect, learn, and co-create together, with the ultimate goal of best serving social justice organizations.
We bring deep political analysis to the table
We believe that capacity building is not a neutral endeavor. We bring deep political analysis to the table and believe it is imperative to address white supremacy and issues of power and privilege in our work with clients.
Our approach is always collective
We believe that movement builders need to be vulnerable, lean on one another, and engage in deeper field-wide conversations. We believe that our liberation depends on how we collectivize, decolonize, build power, and share resources. There is not a moment to waste in building political power and alignment in how we build together across movements, and we accompany movement organizations and leaders in every stage of their growth and development by working shoulder to shoulder with them on their challenges, opportunities, and dreams to work towards justice and liberation.
We weather the storms through continual evaluation and care
We believe that liberatory practice involves continual discernment, humility, vulnerability, and nurturing of relationships. In our work, the storms to be weathered are many—adaptation, iteration, and co-creation is essential to fuel resilience and resistance.