Seeking a Consultant for Strategic Planning
Request for Conversation
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless is seeking an experienced strategic planning consultant to design and facilitate a participatory planning process that will create a three to five-year strategic plan for the organization.
About Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) advocates and organizes to prevent and end homeless because we believe housing is a human right in a just society. Founded in 1980, CCH develops campaigns and initiatives to address the causes of homelessness including, but not limited to lack of affordable housing, lack of access to health care and services and lack of jobs paying a living wage. We place much emphasis on organizing and developing leaders within the homeless population to become spokespersons and leaders of our various initiatives. CCH does its work in accordance with its organizational values – collaboration, integrity, strategic action, compassion, and intersectionality. Our organization aspires to be an anti-racist organization that is actively dismantling white supremacy both internally and externally. To that end, we have established internal structures, including board and staff racial equity committees and racial equity analysis of organization policies, to help us move this work
forward.
Currently, we have 30 full and part time staff and 29 board members from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.
Planning Needs
CCH is in the last year of its current three-year strategic plan. We want to develop the next 3-5 year plan during the remainder of our fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2021, with a final plan to come before the Board of Directors in September 2021.
We want a process that will be led be the organization’s staff, board, and people with lived experience that work closely with CCH (referred to as grassroots leaders), with substantive input from key stakeholders, including homeless service providers and law clients, and that will create a map for the next stage of our organization’s journey that is centered in combatting white supremacy and moving towards becoming an anti-racist organization. This work includes discussing changes to organizational
structures to formally shift power to grassroots leaders and embed racial equity work in all facets of the organization’s structure and culture.
Consultant Qualifications
We are looking for a consultant who will help us design the planning process and then facilitate that process. The ideal candidate will have deep experience working with organizations that do community organizing and advocacy, as have a proven track record of working to dismantle white supremacy.
The consultant will be working with a board/staff/grassroots leader team to create the process. The ideal candidate will have experience incorporating grassroots leaders into a strategic planning process in a meaningful way.
Selection Criteria
CCH will use the following criteria to determine which consultant is the best fit for this work.
- Demonstrated subject matter knowledge and expertise – the extent to which individual demonstrates skills and abilities in the areas of: experience working with organizations that do community organizing and advocacy; an understanding of how to integrate racial equity issues
into a strategic planning process; and development of strategic planning working sessions. The ideal candidate will have had some experience working as a community organizer and can bring that expertise to the process. - Recent experience as a consultant in the desired area of expertise.
- Rate reasonableness – the extent to which rates are considered reasonable compared to the individual’s experience and qualifications and to market prices. Although this will be an important determinant, it will not be the primary one.
Response Requested
If you are interested in being considered for this work, please let us know. The process will begin with an initial conversation to share information, learn about each other, and determine if working together may be a good fit. After the discussion, if both parties are interested in continuing the conversation, we will ask the candidate to provide a written synopsis of the proposed work, qualifications, and costs.
Please reach out by January 20, 2021.
Our hope is to hold these conversations in January/February and make a final decision by late-February.
Please send your response and/or direct any questions to Doug Schenkelberg, Executive Director, at doug@chicagohomeless.org