Facilitation & Training

We help clients develop organizational and collective structures that are robust and flexible enough not only to resolve current issues but also to anticipate future ones.

In helping organizations enhance their sustainability, Mission Spark’s consultants work through a lens of adaptive capability.  Facilitation and skills building are two primary ways we help strengthen social impact efforts.

Mission Spark provides expert facilitation and process design to engage the many stakeholders who help make your organization or effort impactful. We do not shy away from conflict or complexity, and are often brought in to help support organizations wrestle with challenging efforts in service of greater results.

Mission Spark cares about systems-level impact, and seeks opportunities to facilitate collective impact efforts. We facilitate collaboratives, boards, stakeholder gatherings, and staff teams through creative and engaging processes. We help groups gain greater clarity, reach collective decisions, and establish shared visions.

We also help build the capabilities and skills of teams, collectives, and boards through interactive trainings and talks on a wide variety of topics that support the strategy, culture and operations of social impact organizations and collective action efforts.

Our trainings are supported by best practice and innovative methods, and include materials and tools. Trainings are often combined with other mission spark services as part of implementation or preparation efforts for strategic shifts.

Get in touch today and let us know how we can help.

Facilitation and Training Offerings

Facilitations

  • World-cafe style feedback processes
  • Focus groups
  • Designing learning processes
  • Cultural shifts
  • Innovation opportunities
  • Strategy development
  • Collective visioning

Trainings

  • Design for learning
  • Shift your organization’s culture
  • Fail Better: design smart mistakes to succeed sooner
  • Building more resilient and innovative social impact organizations
  • Building strong boards
  • Board roles and responsibilities
  • Conflict mediation for boards and staff
  • The talent challenge: building, supporting and retaining effective teams
  • Design for impact: launching a new program
  • Sustainable business models
  • Developing effective strategic plans
  • Supporting collective action
  • From action to outcomes: program evaluation

Other custom offerings and processes are available by request.

Enhancing Teacher Voices through TISPE (Teacher-Informed Solutions in Performance Evaluation)

Overview

In 2018, there was a conversation at Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC) around Colorado’s Teacher Performance Evaluation legislation, or SB 191. Senate Bill 10-191, also known as the Educator Effectiveness law, established new requirements for evaluating licensed personnel in Colorado based on quality standards adopted by the State Board of Education. Afterward, discussions around a new initiative called the Teacher-Informed Solutions in Performance Evaluation (TISPE) began. 

TISPE was designed and developed by The Rose Community Foundation, a funder of systems-level change in Colorado, with support from Public Education and Business Coalition, Teach Plus, and Colorado Children’s Campaign. The TISPE Initiative was designed and developed to create a platform by which teacher voices and experiences could be brought to the forefront of any new policy and implementation discussions and changes related to Colorado’s Teacher Performance Evaluation legislation—SB 191.

The Need

TISPE Meeting

TISPE went beyond discussion to real implementation experience. It was designed to bring teachers together to explore case examples on design and implementation in Colorado and beyond, and to then create funded opportunities for teachers to develop and implement micro-pilots. These micro-pilots would explore the possibilities and limitations of Colorado’s performance evaluation system in teachers’ home communities. With their experiences developed into case studies, teachers would then have the opportunity to come together to create suggestions for a set of teacher performance evaluation (TPE) design principles and insights that would be reported to legislators to inform the 2020 legislative session. 

Mission Spark was brought on to serve as the program facilitator, administrator, and technical assistance provider of the TISPE initiative.

Our Approach

Those involved with the design of TISPE prioritized the importance of teachers’ voices informing what TPE looks like in Colorado—both in legislation and in implementation practice. Organizers of TISPE are not supporting a particular viewpoint around what TPE should look like and are not driving to any particular outcome. TISPE is about creating a vessel or platform from which teachers can explore this topic, with adequate supports in terms of funding and technical assistance. 

With this in mind, Mission Spark provided the following services for TISPE: 

  • Providing project design framework
  • Organizing and facilitating the February Teacher Summit; Interviewing and developing case studies on effective models of teacher performance evaluation
  • Designing the grant application for and selection process of funded micro-pilots
  • Providing technical support and monitoring of micro-pilots
  • Drafting micro-pilot case studies
  • Providing framework for a legislator engagement webinar
  • (The following is scheduled for Fall 2019) 
  • Designing, organizing and facilitating a fall Teacher Summit which will showcase the micro-pilot projects, learnings and insights, and drafting Guiding Principles for policy modifications and suggestions for implementation practices
  • Creating a written brief to feature the micro-pilot projects and insights, and share teachers’ Guiding Principles and Recommendations that will be shared with Legislators and CDE by November of 2019, to inform the 2020 legislative session.

Outcomes

SB 191 has been fully implemented in Colorado since 2014, providing ample experience from data regarding both the effectiveness of the law in its current design and impact on teachers. At the outset of the creation of the legislation, those involved framed SB 191 as needing review and changes based on the experience of early implementation. There is momentum among policymakers to review and potentially alter the legislation in the coming sessions.

Mission Spark’s work will be used to help bring teachers’ ideas and experience to the forefront of the discussion related to teacher performance evaluation. TISPE’s outcomes, guiding principles and recommendations will be shared with Legislators and CDE by November of 2019, to inform the 2020 legislative session.

Cultural Transformation for Redline

Overview

RedLine is an art center and public charity located in Denver, Colorado with a mission to foster education and engagement between artists and communities to promote social change.

RedLine focuses on supporting artists through a two-year artist residency that provides studio space, community engagement, and professional development, as well as providing innovative programming for communities in the surrounding neighborhoods. Viewing art and arts education through the lens of social issues, the organization ensures equitable access to the arts for under-resourced populations by working to fulfill the bold vision of empowering everyone to create social change through art.

The Challenge

In Fall 2015, RedLine contracted with Mission Spark through funding support by the Denver Foundation. RedLine’s executive leadership team sought both leadership coaching and an organization-wide cultural assessment and plan. The leadership team wanted to develop better ways of communicating with each other, create better systems and processes for handling decisions, and establish better work culture all around for the whole staff to drive RedLine forward in its mission and goals. RedLine sought to define its existing organizational culture and then determine the culture they wanted to build toward, in support of staff, the organization’s mission, and in the context of RedLine’s unique and ever-changing space.

Our Approach

The Redline team gathered around a conference table
The Redline Team at a strategic planning workshop.

Mission Spark conducted facilitated sessions with RedLine’s executive team and staff to identify critical needs and skills, hone in on outcomes, develop a shared sense of the Redline vision, and identify a desired organizational culture that resonated. Mission Spark also provided leadership and operations coaching for RedLine’s executive team, with skills training as needed. With staff, Mission Spark facilitated a structured and creative, interactive cultural assessment process.

Mission Spark then conducted a board assessment in relation to cultural fit, and supported the board’s executive team as it focused on sharing and reinforcing the culture of Redline. Mission Spark supported the design, documentation, implementation, and evaluation of structures and protocols that emerged as priorities to reinforce RedLine’s culture and mission. Guidance and support was also provided to staff in the development of an action plan to align organizational strategy, operations, and culture.

The Redline team enjoying a creative brainstorming session during the workshop.

Outcomes

Mission Spark produced a summary report and set of documents detailing Redline’s desired culture and an action plan to move toward that culture. Mission Spark worked through the findings with the leadership team, and provided individual and team coaching to support around the changes and shared vision Redline had identified, as well as provided a series of tools tailored to address specific needs of the team.

Mission Spark worked with staff to identify and pilot new work approaches over a six month timeline, including things like posting status notes in open work space, using a rolling white board to share what threads of work were taking place in a particular week. In doing so, Mission Spark helped shift the approach to and use of staff meetings.

In the time spent working with RedLine, Mission Spark developed a cultural implementation strategy and coached leadership in how to champion and preserve culture. As a diverse urban laboratory where art, community, and education converge, RedLine’s organizational culture has been bolstered by partnering with Mission Spark.