Onside Partners is passionate about supporting people and organizations who share our aspirations for humanity and our planet. We are a women-owned consultancy based in Oakland, California. We bring legal, policy, and urban planning expertise and decades of experience working in and with nonprofits, government, and philanthropy. We are keen listeners, rigorous researchers, strong writers, clear communicators, practical advisors, and candid thought partners.
We help leaders and teams hone their vision and take action
Charting a clear and feasible path forward can feel messy and confusing. But we have a strong track record of enabling leaders to make sense out of complex information and take a stepwise approach to channeling data and ideas into concrete, actionable plans.
We take an interdisciplinary, systems-based approach
The interdependence of our society and the scale of challenges we face demand strategies that bridge geographies, demographics, sectors, and disciplines. We’ve gained unique perspective by working across fields including public health, civil rights, environmental sustainability, digital privacy, housing, economic justice, reproductive rights, criminal justice, and more. Our clients appreciate that we complement their deep substantive expertise with a broad understanding of what it takes to build a movement and drive structural change within and across institutions.
We facilitate inclusive, fun, and meaningful processes
We believe any process is as important as the outcome. This means being deliberate about how engagement and decisionmaking will unfold, ensuring inclusivity while recognizing the limits of people’s available time and the need to move the process along. We are skilled facilitators, attentive to how people experience our time together. We design highly engaging meetings of all sizes, and participants report feeling heard, energized, and hopeful.
We make 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 deliver excellence
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 value the caliber of advice and deliverables we provide and the efficiency with which we provide them.