Grounding Solutions is focused on working with you to understand your “why” so we can simplify your “how”, with a focus on people.
In the fast-paced culture of social purpose organizations, we support organizational slowdowns to highlight what is most important, what is needed, and how to find ways forward in alignment with your values. We recognize that a lot of this work is iterative (i.e. you don’t always know what’s needed) and adaptive (i.e. you may have some processes already, or things that are working and some gaps or areas that need improvement). Our approach ensures that all our work is people-centred and supports organizational and individual capacity-building through care and collaboration.
Some of our areas of work:
> Building, strengthening and simplifying structures, systems, and processes that support you to succeed;
> Facilitating organizations to support team building, organizational planning, and change management processes; and
> Leadership and organizational capacity-building (through 1-on-1 or group coaching, tailored workshops, and multi-session facilitated processes).
Why Grounding Solutions?
As individuals with over 30 years of combined experience working in and with community-based organizations, we understand too well the challenges of adapting to meet the needs of our communities, often while being under-resourced and under-supported. We know the tremendous amount of energy and care that goes into showing up day after day, especially in the last few years as needs continue to grow and resources feel more sparse. It can be difficult to find resources and time to focus inwards to ensure that your organization is effectively and meaningfully meeting the changing needs – this can have large impacts on organizational culture, accessibility, and sustainability. This is where we come in.
Our priority is to support you to feel resourced and equipped to meet your long-term strategy and goals while maintaining a focus on sustainability and adaptability.
Whether through coaching and mentorship, supporting you to develop/strengthen your organizational culture, or building a system/process to support your operations, our goal is to make it so that you feel confident and able to lean on your internal system and culture with ease, allowing you to focus on meeting your mission and supporting the communities you work with.
Our Approach
We approach each need or project through a holistic and people-centred approach. Coming with curiosity, we facilitate conversations that ask the right questions to find the deeper reasons and root issues/needs. We work with you to fully understand your challenges and goals to co-develop strategies and implement solutions that will meet your needs while aligning with your organization’s (desired) culture and values.
You know your organization, your mission, and its people the best – we create a container that allows us to be flexible and collaborate to co-develop solutions that are simple, accessible, sustainable, and easily usable by everyone in your organization. We believe that long-term sustainability is only possible through centering and building cultures of intentional care, mutual learning, equity and access.
Guided by our experience, we created Grounding Solutions with a deep desire to support grassroots groups and smaller organizations. We keep asking ourselves how we can support these organizations (that have the least funds and time) while sustaining ourselves in this work. For all of our services, we are committed to providing sliding-scale models to under-resourced organizations and grassroots groups. In the near future, we are hoping to transparently expand what we can offer.
Our Values
Equity and Access
As trans people of colour, who are settlers, we continuously hold the many complexities of how to do our work in a way that centres and empowers those who are most impacted by (systemic) oppression. We aspire to go beyond approaches focused on making space for people (traditionally excluded) within the current systems of colonization, capitalism, and white supremacy; we work to re-create organizational culture grounded in knowledge, wisdom, and ways of being that start from communities that are often not centered in these spaces. We focus on embodying equity and access as foundational to re-imagining and re-creating organizational systems, processes, and culture.
In our work, we balance meeting organizations and people where they’re at, supporting their learning and growth journey, and collaborating to challenge the status quo of “how it’s done” or “should be done”. As we support others, we also support ourselves to grow, (un)learn, listen, show up, dream, and imagine ways of being that are more just, joyful, and healing-centred to allow all of us to thrive.
Communities of Care
Now more than ever it feels imperative that we practice and intentionally decolonize from individualism and build community care in our personal, interpersonal, and systemic work. We believe that organizations can be more joyful, trusting, and sustainable when relationship–building, collaboration, and mutual wellbeing are meaningfully built into organizational culture.
True care requires us to come from a place of best intentions and a genuine desire for betterment. We aim to see people in their whole complexity, not just the systems they operate within. As part of our commitment to re-thinking systems change work, we understand the importance of healing and nourishing structures that support people; sometimes this includes slowing down to understand and move through breakdowns or harm.
As individuals committed to non-carceral (i.e. not using punishment) and transformative justice frameworks, care to us also means limiting/eliminating punitive practices related to employment and work culture in organizations.
Collaboration and Mutual Learning
We prioritize and value knowledge-sharing and learning in order to create engaged, nourishing, and sustainable work cultures where every person is able to bring their inner and community wisdom. We believe that doing so will help to create space for self- reflection, introspection, and organizational cultures that foster true collaboration.
We believe that none of this work is possible in silos. We lean on rich histories of dreaming, resisting, and imagining ways to thrive and better our world for everyone. Building cultures of mutual learning and collaboration is how we move away from band-aid solutions and imagining what might be possible together.
In our desire to support grassroots groups, de-center how knowledge is commodified, and pushing back against cultures of competition, we are committed to sharing tools and resources publicly, amplifying and supporting work from others, and sharing our own learnings.
Who we work with
We primarily work with community-based organizations and social purpose organizations. This includes: nonprofit and charitable organizations, grassroots groups, community groups, advocacy groups, arts-based organizations and collectives, foundations, associations, and membership-based organizations.
Please reach out to us and we would love to find ways to support your work.