You designed the strategy. Now design the practice.
For impact work to actually scale, it needs to be co-designed by everyone in the coalition: funders, designers, deliverers, and the people closest to the problem. And it needs to live and breathe past any one event.
The shared vocabulary, the alliances, the skills, the rituals: that's the work. For 17 years I've been the person foundations and nonprofits call to design it.
Start with what you're working on →
¶ Where would you like to start?
Pick the one closest to what you're working on. I'll show you how I'd think about it.
None of these quite fit? Book a session and tell me what you need support on →
¶ What 60 minutes can actually shift
A coalition had been running the same annual gathering for over a decade. They'd hired consultants for flashier speakers. They'd added breakouts. The gathering kept getting more polished. And none of it was leading to real engagement or impact in the community they served.
In 60 minutes, we stopped talking about the gathering. We talked about the eleven months around it. They re-envisioned their engagement for the first time in a decade, with periodic gatherings building toward the big one, and the membership stopped being an audience and became a community.
— the kind of conversation a Design Session is for.
¶ Why my approach is different
Most consultants will help you optimize the event. I'll help you see this isn't all that matters.
For 17 years I've worked across fellowships, cohort programs, coalitions, and funder learning communities, serving more than 1,500 changemakers globally. The pattern is consistent: the visible event, whether a conference, a high-profile convening, or a launch, gets all the design energy. The invisible architecture around it, the rhythm of contact, the relationships, the way people actually learn together over time, gets almost none.
That invisible architecture is the strategy. It's what determines whether a gathering produces a memory or a movement, whether a cohort bonds or disperses, whether a coalition holds or fades. I've spent my career learning how to design it, fund it, and help others see it. That's what a Design Session with me is actually for.
The Offer
The Design Session
60 minutes. One thing you're working on. A diagnosis, three concrete moves, and an honest read on what's possible.
Bring a real piece of work: a coalition that's plateauing, a cohort you're designing, a convening that feels flat, a program in transition. Leave with sharper questions, concrete moves you can make next week, and clarity on whether deeper work makes sense.
A real piece of work. No deck required. A short pre-call note is enough.
A written reframe in your inbox the next day. Three concrete moves. An honest read on whether deeper work makes sense.
Credited toward deeper engagement if it leads there.
¶ What people say about working with me
A few people who've trusted me with their work
"Cole designed and built MovingWorlds Institute's Global Social Impact Fellowship and our TRANSFORM Support Hub, a global learning and acceleration program for social entrepreneurs, in collaboration with pro-bono consultants and corporate partners. He has a rare ability to build learning programs where people genuinely show up for each other, and where the architecture of the program does as much work as the curriculum. His background as a founder, operator, consultant, and facilitator gives him a perspective that's genuinely valuable to organizations, and even more so to the people inside them."
Mark HoroszowskiCo-founder & CEO, MovingWorlds
"Working with Cole is a pleasure. He helped us design and launch the Grand Challenges Impact Lab at UW, a course pairing students with social enterprise leaders and communities in India. As an instructor and advisor, Cole empowers people to take the lead while providing gentle support through resources and thoughtful questions. He combines knowledge and humility with seemingly unending amounts of energy, enthusiasm, and joy."
Julian MarshallProfessor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Washington
"I brought Cole on to program manage WTIA's biggest conference of the year, six weeks before the event. He quickly gained the trust of a large team: staff, contractors, interns, and advisory committee members, and executed beautifully. His greatest gift is his ability to hold complexity while still making the work actually fun. That is rare."
Julie Pham, PhDFounder of CuriosityBased (formerly WTIA)
Recent recommendations from current clients available on request.
¶ Field notes
Want a deeper sense of how I think?
From Facilitating Change, the podcast I co-host. Curated by what you're wrestling with.
On sensing the room, naming tensions, and inviting quieter voices without losing momentum.
With David Ehrlichman on impact networks and the architecture of collaborative work.
With Joel Fariss on creating spaces for transformative change in complex times.
A conversation on the small, repeated practices that shape lasting transformation.