Onside Partners is a women-owned consultancy based in Oakland, California. We bring deep legal, planning, and policy expertise and more than three decades of experience in nonprofit leadership roles. We are keen listeners, rigorous researchers, strong writers, clear communicators, practical advisors, and candid thought partners.
We begin every engagement by drawing out and clearly articulating our clients’ status quo, goals, and assumptions. Thus, we help our clients start from a shared frame of reference, identify and target their most pressing challenges, and achieve their highest priority outcomes.
We help leaders and teams hone their vision and take action
Charting a clear and feasible path forward can feel messy and confusing, but as our clients attest, we have a strong track record of enabling leaders to articulate their goals and assumptions, make sense out of highly complex information, and take a stepwise approach to channeling data and ideas into concrete, actionable plans.
We take an interdisciplinary, systems-based approach to innovation
The interdependent nature of our society and the scale of challenges we face demand strategies that bridge geographies, demographics, sectors, and disciplines. We bring policy, legal, and planning credentials, along with experience in the public health, urban planning, environmental, and digital privacy fields. Our work in and with nonprofits, government, and philanthropy gives us visibility into what it takes to drive structural change across institutions.
We commit to making equity tangible
We find that people often have good intentions that don’t translate into meaningful improvements when it comes to centering equity in their work. We help clients walk the talk by defining clearly what equity means in their context; facilitating inclusive processes; prioritizing the perspectives of those traditionally pushed to the margins; and identifying specific equity goals and outcomes.
We efficiently produce the highest quality work
Our consulting model is unique because we do the substantive work ourselves instead of delegating to less experienced staff. When needed, we partner with expert peers. Our clients consistently appreciate the caliber of advice and deliverables we provide and the efficiency with which we provide them.