We engage in a wide range of strategic initiatives with our clients. Underpinning each engagement is our commitment to providing the best available data and analysis; setting clear priorities; driving toward decisions; honing resource allocation; articulating goals, targets, and theories of change; and building actionable plans. CEA is thoughtful about co-designing successful processes with our clients so that strategic initiatives are developed to balance participation, incorporate a range of perspectives and sources of information, and efficiently move toward decisions and action. Our services include:

• Grantmaking strategies
• Organizational or initiative-level program strategies
• Holistic business planning
• Field- or sector-level landscaping and analysis
• Opportunity assessment
• Field building and funder coordination
• Conservation finance and sustainable investment strategies
• Supply-chain sustainability and transparency strategies

Developing strategies, assessing impact, and executing programs successfully often includes designing and running effective meetings and workshops with team members, boards, partners, collaboratives, and sometimes the public. CEA consultants provide expert thought partnership in designing meetings and workshops that are engaging, productive, and fit for purpose. By combining our subject matter expertise, our on-the-ground insights from diverse networks, and our facilitation and synthesis abilities, we can successfully steer productive conversations that bring clarity to issues and drive toward action.

• Meeting and workshop design and facilitation
• Meeting and workshop insight generation and synthesis
• Funder collaborative and NGO group facilitation including guiding shared agendas, coordinating strategic planning, and aligning grantmaking efforts

We provide practical, flexible, and sometimes hands-on operational solutions to help organizations build capacity, strengthen internal systems and programs, and adapt to evolving needs. Our services support organizations in aligning their structure, processes, and capabilities to implement their strategy effectively. Our services include:

• Designing and launching funder collaboratives
• Initiative incubation, including start-up staffing support
• Grant sourcing and diligence
• Grantee convening and collaboration
• Meeting and workshop facilitation
• Board development and management
• Funding strategies

In addition to strategy and operations support, our clients commission CEA to conduct analyses or secondary research that clients can use internally or contribute to field-level learning and share in the public domain. We can run such analyses independently or in partnerships, or team members can join broader collaborations. Such engagements include data analysis, literature review, case studies, policy analysis, focus groups, and expert consultation. Past analyses have included:

• Grant database creation and analysis
• Sector-level climate mitigation analysis
• Field-level state-of-play assessments
• Roadmaps or frameworks for collective action

CEA’s monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practice supports our clients across all of our areas of work in designing strong impact measurement frameworks, learning from their investments, and assessing and reporting on their programs’ progress. Our MEL engagements are learning oriented and designed to help our clients understand their outcomes and adapt their practices.

Our team offers a unique blend of functional and thematic expertise that allows us to combine MEL best practices and tools with context-specific knowledge. We take a collaborative and adaptive approach to delivering bespoke MEL solutions in response to our clients’ learning priorities. We regularly design and facilitate learning sessions to collectively make sense of insights and capture varied perspectives. This allows us to effectively communicate results so they can inform strategic and financial priorities. Across all our work, we prioritize centering equitable and inclusive approaches with careful consideration of the burden on partners. We seek to continually learn and evolve our methods and practices in line with trust-based approaches. Our services include:

• Design and implementation of multi-year MEL programs
• Logic models and theory of change development
• Learning session facilitation
• Research to support learning agendas
• Third-party evaluations
• Impact analysis diligence frameworks or impact audits
• Emissions reduction potential analyses

CEA’s expertise in the environmental sector extends to organizational consulting, and the operational needs of our clients. Using a consulting-based model that leverages our networks and those of our clients, CEA identifies top-tier talent with a focus on finding the right experience and cultural fit for the organization. We successfully recruit senior leadership and management-level positions, including executive directors and presidents, finance and operations executives, managing directors, as well as program, science, development, and communications professionals.

Our many years of experience working with businesses and national and international environmental organizations have afforded us a deep understanding of our clients’ work and access to a broad network of professionals from across the environmental and nonprofit fields. In addition, we provide customized guidance and support on the full spectrum of organizational design issues. Our services include:

• Executive search and transition planning
• Staff recruitment and hiring support
• Strategic talent acquisition partnerships
• Board member recruitment
• Workforce and staffing strategy

Learn more about CEA Recruiting