Nonprofits and Governments

Hydro power station depicting working with nonprofits and governments

Often nonprofits and governments can be entrenched in decades of bureaucracy. The time it takes to become enmeshed also means that strong brands have been built and name recognition is high. There can be great reluctance to evolve, and a fear of change that requires patience and a longer-term perspective.

Sutherland & Associates is comfortable working within lengthy timelines, asking hard questions, and clarifying the landscapes of funding, partnerships, and language barriers. The team cultivates tenacious research skills and capacity to frame guiding questions, create and assess data sets, and analyze for trends and answers. It works within existing teams to:

  • Tease out practical applications from big ideas
  • Interpret the languages used by various fields of practice to smooth communication across disciplines and sectors
  • Go deeply into specific innovative concepts, testing them for equity, economic stability, and environmental impacts
  • Communicate highly technical concepts to non-technical audiences so that policy and operational changes can be implemented
  • Find interested parties to host next steps, so that good ideas do not expire when initial funding sources are spent

Sutherland & Associates understands that change is complex, and not limited to lab, governance structure, or demographic. A holistic problem-solving approach is used, so that outputs can be implemented within existing work-flow structures. The firm seeks what works best, figures out how to do it, and frees ideas from jargon so they can be understood and used by stakeholders.