The Association of Philanthropic Counsel engaged SOAR Community Network and Mali Phonpadith in July 2021 to assist with vision, mission, and values, and with operationalizing our goals for diversity, equity, and inclusion. We selected SCN from a proposal process, and we are SO glad we did. Mali calmly facilitated two half-day sessions for us, which is particularly remarkable because members of APC are themselves all trained, experienced facilitators in group processes. With Mali’s guidance, we could focus on the content and make significant progress. She has stayed with us as part of our engagement with quarterly check-ins and counsel. This is important for an all-volunteer organization of consultants as we need someone to hold us accountable. Thank you, Mali and SCN.

APC has 35+ independent and small philanthropic consultancy firms from across the nation as members. As consultants ourselves, many of our members are experienced in facilitating strategic mapping sessions but we needed outside guidance to help us come to a consensus on our association’s vision, mission and DEIA commitments.

We engaged SOAR in a mapping process that was delivered virtually, due to COVID, over two days. The approach that SOAR and Mali took to survey all of us in advance, help us clearly understand the process, guide us to have deeper conversations and gather the information and provide it back to us in our debrief, post retreat, really helped us gain the clarity and consensus we were seeking.

From there, we had a much easier time finalizing our association’s vision, mission, values and strategic plan.