Some of our team members are in the process of becoming accredited SROI practitioners through SROI Canada. To learn more about social return on investment go HERE.

Stories that impact us have successfully bridged a connection from their story to ours. When stories are bridged, distance is reduced and understanding is built.

Building bridges requires mindful planning. Just like constructing a physical bridge there are standards and best practices that will guide you.

Where will you locate the bridge? What may at first seem to make sense may not once you engage people who will be impacted by it.  It is important to be aware of  cultural and environmental considerations. Engaging all stakeholders in the design is a critical component.

We engineer story-bridges that span distance and are intended to last for generations. We use a model founded on consultation and collaboration.

When we first started doing what it is we do there was a serious shortage of materials with which to build our house on. So we built the foundation from scratch. We want to share these foundational materials because there's far better ways for you to spend your time.

We have a ready-to-go stock of materials you can customize for your own use.  Our foundation materials have been carefully constructed and have passed (with perfect scores!) several accreditation peer reviews. Our materials use easy to understand language and include examples of visuals and charts which increase shared understanding. We believe there is power in simplicity.

Read more to see what we offer.

We carry governance, ethics, information management, human resources, health and safety, and program specific practice guides.  We also supply process guides to  assist you in planning a product and/or service from conceptual stages to evaluation.

If you would prefer us to do the customization for you we can make that happen. We will connect with a member of your team and gather the information we need. We have a simple method for information gathering which will significantly reduce the stress on your end.  We are able to customize and brand the documents to your specifications. You will own the rights to your materials once they've traded hands.

We all know how costly brain drain is.

We assist you in building your knowledge capital. Having easily accessible and up-to-date policy, procedure, and how-to-guides protects your investments, reduces risk and increases retention.

The tools we introduce are made for anyone to use, we show you how to use them and then get out of your way. We provide electronic and HTML Tips for Tools Guides for any tool you choose to bring in to your organization. As your tools will adapt over time you will be able to easily make changes to the tool guides to keep them current.

There may be situations where you would prefer to use our services on an ongoing basis and we do that too. We don't foster dependencies we feel we offer creative options.

Our research department spends a great deal of time hunting for tools to make story telling easier. In many cases the technological tools [applications] we use will be unknown to you. We believe some developers have chosen not to market to certain sectors because they perceive resistance to adoption of new technologies.  We think they might have sold us short and that's where we come in!

FYI - We are not IT Specialists or software developers, we are typical users.  We know how to turn on a computer, connect to the web,  drag and drop, and use a smart phone or tablet for personal use.

Continue reading to view our tool vetting process.

Vetting Process

1. We specifically scout outside the typical and extrapolate concepts to see if they can be applied for our purposes. 

2. Next we talk to the developers directly.  We ask if the product is customizable and adaptable. We ask what their plans are in keeping up with technology. We ask if they are able to integrate with other products. While we are asking we are rating their responsiveness to our questions; we assess their customer service and we test their ability to co-create.

3. Finally we try it ourselves.  We look for an intuitive UI [user interface] and measure the learning curve against the benefit of the tool.  Sometimes we've liked the product so much we've become formally affiliated.

We only choose tools that deliver a HUGE bang for their relatively small investment and make sure they are scalable for small to large organizations or projects. We choose tools that you can customize for your own use.  Building your own tool box removes the need to buy out of the box applications requiring specialists to adapt them to your unique usage.