Services to rise above

Our solutions for:

people

A leadership development and coaching approach, with a race and resilience lens.

Your teams are literally bursting with potential, but things just aren’t working. Old approaches, worn out ways of management, and disproven thinking about people and work are standing in the way. Management and staff carry old work wounds, having been demoralized in the past. These are the mental baggage weighing people down as they go about their work and interact with one another. Your people truly want to do a good job, but they need the right management, tools, and culture shifts in order to thrive. You need someone from the outside to come in and offer a fresh, tested approach.

Rise Above offers solutions rooted in service oriented leadership and coaching to develop people and teams. For us, DEI isn’t a buzzy acronym; it’s the minimum necessary investment in building a healthy culture of trust and honesty. We focus on rehabilitating people to fix the overall health of the team, and the central questions we lead with are: what do people need to be successful? How can management block and tackle, so every day people know that management is there as an ally, to lift them into being as successful as possible?

Picture it with us: a group of healthy, fulfilled people working in relationship with one another toward a desired team goal. Your culture empowers them to listen to one another. People feel safe enough to talk through issues as they arise, so there is no baggage holding them back. Because everyone works together and has a voice that is valued, your programs become well oiled machines, exceeding desired results and boosting your bottom line.

People CASE STUDY

CLIENT

A 2020 Democratic Presidential Campaign

CONTEXT

Campaigns have a unique opportunity that has largely been missed to inspire and support a diverse, enduring movement of leaders to engage civically to end injustices in their communities after Election Day.

Campaigns tend to focus empowerment externally, looking narrowly only at voters and the community in the district or state in which the upcoming election is happening, totally missing the opportunity to develop strong leaders internally through the execution of campaign strategy who can serve the country beyond the election.

CHALLENGE

Building a team and culture by way of a DEI-E model not only reflects the values of The Democratic Party and the progressive community, but also creates a healthy culture in a fast paced, high pressure campaign environment. But perhaps more impactful then that is the opportunity to access a pool of campaigners with a wealth of talent, diverse perspectives and the ability to connect with an array of voters by way of a diverse team made up of every background and constituency.

Yet this was the first time ever that a Presidential campaign would use the concept of DEI -E (diversity, equity, inclusion / empowerment) talent acquisition and training, so Rise Above had to adapt the model needed to hire for a national campaign running in multiple states.

STRATEGY

To execute, Rise Above:

• Identified, sourced, and developed a group of diverse, culturally competent staff

• Built scalable, accessible, and innovative platforms to accelerate leadership, especially for those who face institutional barriers

• Continued to develop, sustain and improve a diverse, culturally competent, and expert staff to create the culture that enables the most efficient execution of goals and outcomes while developing their leadership

IMPACT

This historic DEI-E talent acquisition and training led to the most diverse campaign staff Arizona, California, and Colorado has ever seen. By adding a significant cultural dimension to our ability to support candidates through an increase in diverse recruitment efforts, win rates increased.

Implementing this approach not only reflected the candidate’s vision for the country, but also provided leadership and professional development for the staff whose impact will long outlast the campaign. In doing so, the campaign built a pipeline of thoughtful, diverse leaders for The Democratic Party and our country. This considered and strategic method of hiring, managing and executing on the front end became scalable, and led to greater outputs and impact on the back end.

Our solutions for:

problems

A holistic approach: seeing the complete picture and applying 360 design to optimize results and growth.

Your programs and people are solid, but things still aren’t right. Your morale, results, and your bottom line are suffering. It’s clear that something is off, but you can’t define it. Maybe you have an inkling of what it is, but you’re too swamped in your own role to carve out time to assess the issues at hand, let alone handle them.

Rise Above’s people driven approach to problems starts with a diagnostic assessment of issues, where we discuss what is happening in order to develop a plan to fix or rebuild systems and structures, provide processes, tools, resources, and / or training to team members, or hire, coach, mentor and / or lead people to execute on their individual roles.

The investment is worth it. See it now: a collaborative office culture where people love their jobs because they understand them, they have the necessary investment in skills and tools to do their jobs, and they feel safe enough to speak up when they notice problems so that they can be addressed, for good.

ProblemS CASE STUDY

CLIENT

A vibrant interfaith organization in Southern California that already had extraordinary impact in their communities and the potential for even more.

CONTEXT

The economic and social realities of the surrounding communities - increasing diversity, coupled with a lack of affordable housing pushing more people into homelessness and poverty - along with long-term trends in American religious life that document people moving away from enrollment in a local worship communities, as well as the delay in adapting to these changes, threaten the long term sustainability of local congregations nationwide.

CHALLENGE

Seeking alignment on goals and communication, better ways of collaborating among faith centers, enhanced spiritual development programs, more targeted and strategic ways to work together internally and externally to end injustices like homelessness, and a way of reinvigorating relationships with long standing Latinx communities in the surrounding areas as well as building relationships with new immigrant communities, the organization brought in Rise Above to help them vision and hone strategic goals and a plan for proposal and adoption at upcoming conference.

STRATEGY

In order to develop the data and research required to have on hand for development of impact advocacy goals and a strategic plan, Rise Above conducted hundreds of hours of internal interviews with a range of relevant parties within each individual house of worship. We also completed external research through discussions and information sharing with community based subject matter experts and organizations.

IMPACT

In advance of their conference, Rise Above delivered:

• Impact Advocacy Goals

• A revised Mission Statement

• Proposed Solutions to Reach IAGs

• A Strategic Plan

Through their continued commitment to advocacy and the development of new and renewed partnerships with local stakeholders and communities, the organization will work collaboratively to scale their impact over the next several years through these partnerships, delivering on their shared vision and values.

Our solutions for:

Programs

A surgical approach: building scalable, accessible, and innovative platforms and programs 

So, you’ve designed the perfect program. Your team knows the overall goal you are working towards, as well as their individual roles. You have your data and your metrics. The only problem is, you aren’t getting the desired results.

Rise Above comes in and looks at established program goals, metrics and outcomes to diagnosis the issues at hand. From there, we assess whether to fix or rebuild your program and come up with a plan of action, providing processes, tools, resources, and / or training to team members. We are on hand to hire, coach, mentor and / or lead people to execute in order to achieve program goals.

Are you ready to step in program success and a stronger bottom line? Visualize this: your program is firing on all cylinders, your team members are confident in their roles and happily encouraging each other to step up and elevate productivity and results, and the program is delivering on its promise, boosting morale and profits. Are you ready to achieve greatness? Can you taste this level of success?

ProgramS CASE STUDY

CLIENT

A national organization focused on leadership development and gaining power for progressive people of color and women

CONTEXT

A representative democracy requires parity, equity, and justice so that all in a nation may thrive. Representation matters because ones lived experience defines ones politics. In order to build a country enriched by diverse leadership, a program must be built to deliver wins for progressive people of color and women seeking to serve in all levels of government - federal, state, and local - so that those seeking public office have the relevant skills, training, and experience to win elections and deliver for their communities.

CHALLENGE

Removing barriers to running for office in order to elect a reflective democracy, changing the status quo by building a pipeline and supporting down ballot leaders through a candidate program support, building a program with an ever increasing focus on long term leadership development for candidates at every level of government, and voter education, mobilization and turnout through strategic voter guide creation and dissemination, in order to drive voter participation by people of color and women voter to elect a representative slate of progressive leaders at all levels of government.

STRATEGY

Our client commissioned Rise Above to develop an organizational strategy and operational plan to build a diverse pipeline of progressive candidates/community leaders, at scale.

To do this Rise Above created the first scalable, highly effective political program in this sector – growing outputs every year while only increasing our budget by 10% each year while training hundreds of candidates.

Rise Above also initiated first processes, goals and results measurement through ongoing team training.

IMPACT

By scaling these first in the sector programs, Rise Above delivered:

• 56% win rate

  • 532 endorsed candidates won

  • 1,020 endorsed candidates, up from 170 in previous years, a 500% increase

  • Record breaking diverse slate of candidates, with more people of color, women, and LGBTQIA candidates running for office than ever before

For details on our COVID-19 specific offerings, click here.