power to change

OpenSource Leadership Strategies builds mindsets, skill sets, and tool sets for social progress.

A national consulting practice based in North Carolina, the OpenSource team researches, designs, and evaluates social purpose efforts and builds capacity of organizations and leaders to transform their work and the world.

Capabilities & Approach

Grounded in organization and leadership development, we bring a power analysis and practical tools to amplify the impact of your mission, advance equity, and benefit the communities at the heart of your work.

Through comprehensive change processes, we strengthen a group’s shared commitment, analytical clarity, and operational skill to achieve your social purpose. We support funders and advocates to articulate their North Star vision and point of view, as well as a strategy for achieving results that people can feel in their lives, both inside the institution and out because of its aligned values and actions.

With every engagement, the OpenSource team adds value to your efforts by blending the roles of:

Strategy Adviser

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Critical Friend

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Capacity Builder

Our Guiding Values

Excellence

This is our threshold value. We commit to bringing our very best to every endeavor. We recognize that what our client-partners do is incredibly important, and often risky. We aim to match your efforts with our own and to relentlessly strive to help you make progress toward your vision of social progress.

Solidarity

We come to this work as steadfast and humble accomplices in the struggle for collective liberation and justice. We strive to show up as good partners to you and your stakeholders, sharing power and responsibility for results. We are transparent and accountable with our client-partners and with each other.

Empowerment

This one is tricky because we do not want to imply that it is possible for us, or anyone, to bestow power on anyone else. We believe in the fundamental right and ability of all people to determine their own destinies. We aim to use our power with integrity and intentionality, to be explicit about power, and to act in ways that expand power rather than limit it. Our approach to the work is to build sustainable capacities that continue after our engagement concludes.

Big Heartedness

We, too, are on a lifelong journey of learning and discovery. We bring a spirit of generosity, compassion, authenticity, and hospitality wherever we go. We take our work seriously, but not ourselves.

Results & Impact

OpenSource consults to foundations, funder networks, nonprofit advocacy organizations and coalitions, and leadership development programs around the country.

Prospective client-partners understandably ask, “What will result from the engagement?” The most honest answer is, “It depends. And mostly on you.”

We deliver high-quality, lasting results while also building a group’s skill and confidence to adapt and innovate long after the engagement comes to a close. We choose our client partners carefully, committing all of our talents to causes we believe in and people we respect and enjoy.

Our Pricing Philosophy

OpenSource values relationships over transactions.

A comprehensive change process requires a minimum of nine months and on average one to three years, which we scope out about a year at a time.

We do not have standard daily or hourly rates – in part, because we very rarely engage in discrete, short-term, tactical interventions that can be measured in days or hours. Rather, just as the engagement must be customized to each client-partner’s needs, the fee structure also must be customized to reflect the value and complexity of the deliverable as well as the budget and capacity of the client-partner.

If there’s a fit between your needs and our capabilities, if we are clear on the scope of work and boundaries, and if we share a spirit of working in partnership, we are confident that we can negotiate a fee that allows both of us to sustain ourselves in the lifelong struggle for collective liberation and justice.

Your Partners

OpenSource engages a regular cadre of partners and can tap a broader network of peers for various engagements based on specific capabilities needed. We are intentionally diverse by identity, experience, discipline, and expertise. OpenSource is a woman of color-owned company.

MORE ABOUT US