Consulting & Facilitation

NewStories works alongside organizations, communities, and networks navigating moments of transition—supporting them to align purpose, relationships, and structure so new ways of working can take root and endure.

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When Change Requires More Than Strategy

Many organizations today are navigating conditions that cannot be solved through strategy alone.

existing structures no longer fit the current reality
internal culture and external aspirations are out of alignment
collaboration becomes strained across roles, teams, or stakeholders
leaders are asked to move forward without clear precedent

In these moments, what is needed is not just a new plan—but a deeper process of alignment.

Our work supports organizations to move through these transitions in ways that strengthen coherence, trust, and long-term capacity.

An Approach Grounded in Practice

Our consulting and facilitation work is rooted in Re-Storying—a living, collaborative approach to navigating change.

We begin by listening—deeply and across perspectives—helping systems recognize themselves more clearly.

From there, we support iterative cycles of reflection and action:

Surfacing what matters — clarifying purpose, values, and underlying assumptions
Strengthening relationships — building trust and shared understanding across the system
Seeing patterns — identifying dynamics, tensions, and emerging possibilities
Designing for alignment — shaping roles, structures, and ways of working that support what is emerging

Each engagement unfolds over time, shaped by the people, place, and conditions involved.

Ways We Partner

Our work takes different forms depending on context.

Engagements may include:

Leadership accompaniment and coaching
Whole-system convenings and facilitated gatherings
Strategic design processes rooted in lived experience
Governance evolution and self-organization design
Cross-sector coordination and network weaving
Principles development and articulation
Ongoing facilitation of dialogue, learning, and integration

Some partnerships are short-term and focused. Others unfold over months or years as conditions evolve.

How This Connects

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Part of a Larger Ecosystem

Our consulting work is not isolated.

It is connected to and informed by:

Re-Storying Disaster — grounded community practice
Resourcing Flow Initiative — evolving systems of funding and coordination
Great Transition Stories & Illumination — pattern recognition and shared learning
PRACTICES — tools and stories drawn from real-world experience

This allows learning to move across contexts—strengthening both your work and the wider field.

Invitation

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Work With Us

Each partnership begins with a conversation.

If you are navigating change in your organization or network, we welcome the opportunity to explore how we might work together.

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ADD TESTIMONIALS SECTION

Read about these four categories to get a sense of the different ways Re-Storying may unfold…

Emerging Program Development & Evaluation

Growing new learning programs to enhance community capacity comes with innumerable challenges. NewStories offers responsive, emergent methods for program development and evaluation (including “Principles-Guided Co-Creation” and systems change through action-learning) to support organizations in Re-Storying.

NewStories helps you to develop insights and leadership capacities needed for these times by building programs for particular communities or contexts. Sometimes NewStories sees themes and needs that are similar in many systems, and creates learning programs to address these through webinars, seminars and workshops, learning journeys and other forms, both face-to-face and virtual. To stay informed and up to date on our most recent projects, sign up for our newsletter here.

Regenerating Community After Disruption & Disaster

Across our small planet, more and more people witness their lives changed in an instant when disaster strikes. What was is gone. What might be is invisible. In the days and weeks after destruction, while the grief is still overwhelming, some people are able to ask “What do I want now, for my life and the future of my community?” In this excruciating time, there is an opening to leap beyond old constraints: an opportunity to Re-Story. NewStories supports you in finding your way in this uncharted territory. NewStories helps you clarify the principles most important to your work and then use those principles to guide you through cycles of considering current work, developing new plans and actions, and then reflecting further on what just happened. This is Re-Storying in action.

Enhancing Leadership & Evolutionary Capacity

We must come to terms with the fact that “teaching” information independent from place, people and purpose is ineffective. Now is the time for cultivating wisdom in action.

There is no “expert” or “gold-standard research-based best practice” that can be identically applied to the complex contexts of every community. NewStories has decades of history offering learning experiences that initiate leaders in the embodied practice of principled, transformative action.

NewStories supports leaders in holding space for evolutionary learning at the community level. This looks like deepening skills at negotiating tension, divergence and outright conflict, as well as building adaptive expertise. NewStories invitse emerging and transitioning leaders into processes that help them learn from their own experiences, and from those of their community, along with others who are outside the day-to-day contexts yet who bringing aligned insights and adaptive inspiration.

Convening and Facilitating Conversations That Matter

NewStories convenes and facilitates “Conversations That Matter” in order to move community-based initiatives forward. A range of approaches are used to facilitate deep dialogue, both in person and virtually. NewStories brings people in any system together, helps you to generate enough trust for truth speaking and deep listening, and then explore questions that matter. While convening and facilitating conversations that matter is an essential part of NewStories’ work after disasters, it is also a core power NewStories’ brings to every engagement.

NewStories nurtures the ability to work with tension and dissent when addressing the reality of challenging situations. By Re-Storying, NewStories can go beyond polarization to see the deeper values that we share, and pursue those values in the systems we’re all a part of.