We help people work together.
Training, facilitation design, and the coordination of multi-organization work.
Who we work with.
Nonprofits. Government agencies. Foundations. Coalitions. State and regional initiatives. Mission-driven teams of every size.
How Work Happens Between People
Strategy describes the destination. Relational infrastructure builds the path.
Relational infrastructure is the system of habits, practices, and agreements that decide how people work together inside an organization, on a team, in a partnership, or across a coalition.
It is the same thing as physical infrastructure. Roads make travel possible. Power grids make electricity possible. Relational infrastructure makes coordinated work between people possible.
When the infrastructure is sound, effort turns into progress. When it is strained, effort turns into exhaustion.
Infrastructure does not appear on its own. It has to be built. Maintained. And repaired.
This is the work of the Human Repair Workshop.
There is no single way to strengthen how people work together. We start by understanding where you are trying to go and then design the structures, practices, and supports people need to get there.
Three ways to
work with us.
01 — Share Capacity
For teams ready to strengthen how they work together.
We help teams build the skills, language, and shared practices they need to work together clearly and consistently.
Our role is to help make the capacity already inside your organization easier to access, practice, and sustain.
This might look like a shared decision-making practice, a common language for partnership, or a clearer map for how information moves between roles.
We work with teams, departments, leadership cohorts, and cross-organization groups. Choose from more than 58 offerings, or partner with us on a longer engagement.
02 — Facilitation Design
Sessions designed to do more than transfer information.
We create agendas, facilitation plans, scripts, slides, worksheets, and participant materials for meetings, retreats, workshops, learning communities, board sessions, conference sessions, and statewide convenings.
Our work helps your session do more than share information. We design for participation, clear conversation, useful decisions, stronger connection, and real follow-through.
Your team can lead the session using the materials we create, or we can facilitate with you.
03 — Collective Work Support
Coordinated effort requires infrastructure.
Collective impact requires more than quarterly meetings and a shared drive. Coalitions, place-based initiatives, multi-grantee portfolios, and funder-led agendas need structure that keeps priorities, people, decisions, and learning connected.
We help design and sustain that structure.
Our role can include meeting design, partner coordination, learning circles, reporting support, documentation, synthesis, sustainability planning, and systems-building. We help funders and partners see what is moving, where strain is showing up, what people are learning, and what is needed next.
The best support is often custom.
Many of our partnerships begin with a conversation and grow into a tailored mix of supports.
Start designing yours.
Based in Michigan. Working regionally, nationally, and internationally—in person and virtually.
Restorative Practices · Systems Thinking · Trauma-Informed Practice · Motivational Interviewing · Liberatory Design · Adult Learning Theory · Appreciative Inquiry · Nonviolent Communication
Examples of the work we’re brought in to do.
STATE-LEVEL INITIATIVE
Coordinating a multi-agency public health response.
A statewide initiative needs a partner who can hold a complex collaboration without competing with any of the organizations inside it. As the named coordinating partner, we serve as the neutral center the network depends on to function.
What we do in this kind of engagement:
- Run the monthly meetings across state divisions, regional bodies, and community partners
- Surface what each partner is learning so insights become available across the network
- Connect partners to one another's progress between meetings
- Lead quarterly learning circles where the hardest-won lessons inside one organization become available to all the others
- Hold the relationships, follow through on decisions, and translate between partners who do not share the same language
FOUNDATION PORTFOLIO
Capacity-building across an entire grantee network.
A foundation wants to invest in the capacity of every organization in its portfolio without managing each engagement directly. We build a credit-based partnership that puts grantees in the driver's seat.
How it works:
- The foundation funds a pool of credits
- Grantees choose the trainings and consulting that fit their own priorities
- We coordinate each engagement directly with the grantee
- The foundation receives aggregate reporting on what was used, by whom, and what was learned across the portfolio
What it produces:
- Real capacity-building across the full network, on each grantee's own terms
- No added administrative burden on the foundation
- Visibility into where strain is most common across the portfolio
NONPROFIT TEAM
A leadership transition handled with intention.
A nonprofit is preparing for an executive director transition and wants to use the moment to strengthen how the organization runs, not just hand off the role. We come in as a thought partner to leadership, the board, and the incoming director.
What we do alongside the team:
- Map the relational infrastructure that currently holds the organization together — what lives in the outgoing ED's head, what is documented, what is carried by the team
- Design a transition plan that protects continuity while creating room for the incoming director to lead
- Facilitate the board, staff, and ED-elect conversations that need to happen before the handoff
- Build the documentation, decision-making practices, and onboarding structure the new director inherits
- Stay engaged through the first ninety days of the new leadership to support what the team is navigating in real time
The organization comes through the transition stronger than it was before, with practices the new director can build on.
STATEWIDE PRESENTATION
A convening designed to do more than gather people in a room.
A statewide network is bringing together more than one hundred practitioners, funders, and agency leaders.
What we design and deliver:
- A clear outcome the convening is built to produce, agreed on with the host team before the agenda begins
- The full agenda, including timing, transitions, and the structure of every session
- Slide decks, facilitation guides, participant materials, and the external-facing content the audience sees
- Small-group structures that let curate connection and exchange
- Capture tools that make the conversations in the room useful after the day ends
- Preparation for the host team to deliver the day with confidence, or co-delivery alongside them
The host team walks away with a session that produced connection and with materials and methods they can use for the next convening.
For Funders
What If Supporting Your Network Was Easier?
Our credit packages allow organizations to access HRW trainings, workshops, and consultation without creating additional work for funders.
Our Framework
Grounded in the
Conditions for Impact.
Our proprietary framework identifies six conditions that shape how work moves across teams, organizations, and systems.
Workers
Do staff have the time, clarity, and support they need to do their jobs well?
Organization
Are roles, priorities, and decisions clear and consistent?
Team
Does the team communicate directly, coordinate effectively, and follow through?
Partners
Do partner organizations work together reliably over time?
Community
Does the community have real voice and trust in the relationship?
We are not here to perform expertise. We are here to partner.
That means we’ll be honest about what we see, curious about what we don’t yet understand, and committed to solutions that work for the people and systems involved.
