Services

Aurora Consulting offers services and training in three primary areas. Click on the heading, or scroll down the page, for more about our services and trainings in each area.

Leadership and Governance - Strengthening the leadership and governance of your organization helps you recognize, manage, and thrive through opportunities and challenges.

Performance Management and Evaluation - Performance management and evaluation are about increasing impact through reflection, adaptation, learning, and growing.

Sustainability - Sustainability is about a multi-pronged approach to organizing and leveraging your resources to further your mission.

Leadership and Governance

Strengthening the leadership and governance of your organization helps you recognize, manage, and thrive through opportunities and challenges.

Our consulting services:

A sampling of our Leadership and Governance trainings:

Board Development Strategies – Engagement, Development, and Recruitment

A great asset of any organization is its board. This training will help you explore how to attract board members who will best serve and lead your organization; how to develop and tap the talents of your board; and how to create opportunities to diversify your board. We will review recent research about board composition and how that applies to your organization and create action plans for board engagement, development and recruitment.

Adaptive Leadership – Innovation and Resiliency

More than ever it is critical for nonprofit leaders to analyze their work and strengthen their capacity to provide increased efficiencies and innovative approaches to solving organizational challenges. This tailor-made training is grounded in relevant research, practical knowledge, innovative ideas, and hands-on solutions. Participants will understand the characteristics that define adaptive, strategic and technical leadership and where these techniques are used. The training will also provide clear steps for engaging with adaptive leadership strategies.

Thriving through Leadership Transitions

Nonprofit organizational leadership is provided by the executive and senior management as well as by the board. This workshop will explore how to plan for leadership transitions and ongoing leadership development to help buffer the impact of a change of leadership. Steps and responsibilities of leadership transitions will be provided to assist an organization in the process of or anticipating a change of key organizational members.

Performance Management and Evaluation

Performance management and evaluation are about increasing impact through reflection, adaptation, learning, and growing.

Our consulting services:

A sampling of our Performance Management and Evaluation trainings:

Organization Assessment: How are you doing?

Conducting an organization assessment provides you with an overall picture of the current strengths and weaknesses of your organization, and helps you prioritize areas for change. We’ll talk about the role of mission, vision, strategy, strategic relationships, program delivery and impact, internal operations and management, resource development, governance, and leadership all with respect to assessment. You’ll learn the basics of data collection, internal and external stakeholder analyses, and how to determine action steps. To help frame the conversation organization assessment will also be discussed in the context of organization life cycles.

Program Evaluation: How to plan, implement and use evaluations on a budget

How can you create an evaluation plan that meets the needs of your funders, other stakeholders, and internal organizational needs? How do you plan an evaluation that is realistic? How can you ensure you’ll collect the right information that you can use to improve your programs? How can you create an integrated evaluation plan that cuts across programs and connects to the organization as a whole? In this training we’ll explore all these issues and present you with clear and comprehensive methods for planning an evaluation, designing the tools, data collection, analysis and reporting, and incorporating the results into your work.

Setting Yourself Apart – Using Measurement to Improve and Demonstrate Performance

How do you talk to stakeholders about your program? How do you demonstrate success to funders? This training will tackle the program and evaluation planning that can help you demonstrate and improve your performance. You will learn how and why to connect these two plans, what makes a good outcome and practice writing them. We will discuss how to use program and evaluation plans to effectively communicate with funders and other stakeholders.

Click here for a full listing of trainings…

Sustainability

Sustainability is about a multi-pronged approach to organizing and leveraging your resources to further your mission.

Our consulting services:

A sampling of our Sustainability trainings:

Strategic Planning, Thinking, and Acting

In these ever changing times it is important that organizations position themselves for sustainability and growth. A strong plan can prevent an organization from being buffeted by the constantly shifting currents of the policy environment. This training will help you explore how to strategically think and act to take advantage of opportunities and avoid pitfalls. We will review recent research about strategic thinking and planning and how that applies to your organization.

Strategic Partnership and Alliances: How can we work together

Organizations continue to strive to do more with less as demand for services increases and large-scale solutions are needed to address increasingly complex issues. This workshop will explore the continuum of organizational alliances. You will come away with a better understanding of why you might want an alliance, what is needed to be successful and how to get started.

Thriving through Leadership Transitions

Nonprofit organizational leadership is provided by the executive and senior management as well as by the board. This workshop will explore how to plan for leadership transitions and ongoing leadership development to help buffer the impact of a change of leadership. Steps and responsibilities of leadership transitions will be provided to assist an organization in the process of or anticipating a change of key organizational members.

Click here for a full listing of trainings…