Supporting community and systems changemakers

Co.spire’s mission and approach 

Co.spire was founded in early 2016 to support nonprofits, foundations and partnership networks in bringing about change at community and systems levels. 

This kind of changemaking involves: 

• Thinking in systems to better understand the change that they want to make;

• Leveraging the power of cross-sector partnerships;

• Joining with others to form networks and to align their efforts;

• Developing the capacity to learn and to adapt in real time, and integrating evaluative thinking throughout the planning and action cycle.

Co.spire works with nonprofits, foundations, partnerships and collaboratives to help them read and understand their system, increase their network capacity, and evaluate and learn from their action. I am committed to supporting grantmakers’ journey towards forms of engagement that are strategic, accountable and responsive to community stakeholders.

Collaboration in my DNA 

Collaborative and cross-sector approaches are part of my DNA, and I bring this ethic into my evaluation work as well.  As I see it, evaluation needs to be relevant and useful, serving client organizations’ real-time learning and decision-making needs.  In order for this to happen, evaluation needs to be owned by its end users all the way through the process. 

I work with clients to:

• design evaluations that meet their real-time learning and decision-making needs;

• bring clients and stakeholders on board to capture and make sense of relevant information;

• facilitate sensemaking and decision-making, ensuring input from all relevant voices.

Highlights

In my 25 years working in and with the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, I have:

• developed and led multi-sector networks, coalitions and partnerships;

• convened innovative place-based funder collaborations;

• led strategic analysis and planning processes for organizations and communities;

• helped to build community-wide evaluation capacity.

Formal education

• M.A. Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, Carleton University

• Graduate diploma in Social Innovation offered in partnership with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience, University of Waterloo

• Graduate diploma, Community Economic Development, Concordia University

• B.A., Applied Social Sciences, Concordia University

Bilingual and bilocal

I am a former Montrealer who has now made my home base in Northeastern Ontario. I continue to spend a lot of my time on the ground with clients and collaborators in Montreal, as well as elsewhere in Québec and Ontario.