We chose Roots & Rivers Consulting because of our excellent rapport and their strong industry knowledge. The greatest value that Roots & Rivers provided was the organizational know-how and significant ability to track and to maintain project deliverables. Our biggest take-away from working with Roots & Rivers was that we needed a whole staff team and adequate planning time to effectively execute this project.

Roots & Rivers supported the Board of Education on their journey of creating a new bold, visionary 10 year Strategic Plan to guide the North Vancouver School District. In the process, their team used a vast array of skills incorporating feedback from multiple stakeholders, rights holders and a diverse Board. They understood when to “push” to get results while also allowing the natural flow of discourse play itself out to create a plan that is both innovative in its approach and bold in its goals. I look forward to working with Roots & Rivers on future projects!

Working with Roots & Rivers was such an enjoyable experience! They really took the time to dive into and understand our organization and where we hope to go. Strategic planning can be daunting but their approach made it feel manageable and achievable. We are thrilled with the outcome.

Roots & Rivers helped us navigate our first strategic planning process, where we struggled through some big questions and wondered about what future growth could look like. It was a challenging task, but the Roots & Rivers team navigated it with grace and ease.

Overall, the strategic and developmental evaluation support of Roots & Rivers has enabled the NCIL to grow as a reflective innovation initiative, staying grounded and reminded of our mission, values and priorities, while keeping on track with our day-to-day activities, outputs and results. Adjustments and pivots are natural to social innovation lab processes, but recognizing them and capturing these effects over time has been a critically valuable aspect of receiving their support, and we hope to continue evaluating, learning and strategizing in this manner in 2020 and beyond.

The Roots & Rivers team did a great job of creating and executing an evaluation of our program in an engaging, respectful and accessible manner. They were responsive, flexible and always willing to incorporate feedback to ensure that the evaluation process was streamlined and truly reflective of the qualitative and quantitative data they captured. I would be happy to work with them again in the future.

I have worked with Roots & Rivers as a contractor for design and facilitation of a social innovation lab, and as a partner in co-developing community dialogues in service of newcomers. In both cases, the team brought exceptional commitment, insights and skills in delivering respectful, effective and engaging experiences. Prioritizing inclusion of experiences and expertise of those we are serving, tailoring strategies, and co-developing creative and bold ideas are among Roots & Rivers' team's myriad skills. Our collaborative work resulted in processes and deliverables that exceeded project outcomes.

Roots & Rivers consulting provided excellent guidance to our team - both to the Board of Directors of the society, as well as to our Executive Director (staff). They have an excellent team of facilitators that ensured conversations were productive, collaborative, and clear for all involved. I would highly recommend Roots & Rivers as consultants for team projects and organizational planning.

We had the great good fortune to work with Roots & Rivers with our recent Strategic Planning process. We are a relatively new professional association and their facilitators were adept at guiding the staff team and Board of Directors through the processes needed for the development of our Mission and Vision statements and our 5 year strategic plan. Given the impacts of the pandemic making it impossible for us to gather in person, they led us through a series of Zoom virtual sessions to do this work. They used creative visual tools to move our discussions along and kept the team engaged and focused. Our end result is a great plan, and a shared excitement for the work ahead. We would be delighted to work with Roots & Rivers again in future.

Working with Roots & Rivers helps me sleep at night because I know someone else is keeping us mindful of all the work we do. It has been a great experience working with Roots & Rivers and I know the team sees the benefits as well."

Working with Roots and Rivers is always insightful and inspiring. Not only do they have deep knowledge of systems change and impact, but they are also open to learning new perspectives, approaches, and ideas from their partners. You really feel like equals in the co-creation process, especially when working towards making positive change in our communities. It was such a pleasure to work with collaborators like Roots and Rivers.

Working with Roots & Rivers has been such an impactful experience for us. I am so grateful for all of the knowledge, patience, and passion they brought to our work. They guided us through the process in such a supportive and thoughtful manner and provided tools, frameworks, and perspectives which will revolutionize our work going forward. I have deep gratitude for Austin and Annelies! Thank you!

Thank you to Roots & Rivers for the work done in helping The College of Opticians of British Columbia work through our Strategic Planning process. The thorough and careful pre-planning and effective use of virtual tools and meeting platform allowed our group to efficiently navigate the process of developing a new plan. Of particular note was the team’s ability to navigate the varied personalities and levels of expertise to allow all participants to be involved and engaged. Their ability to frame questions, to intuitively pick up on nuances of personalities, and to ‘read the virtual room’ made that process enjoyable and resulted in meaningful, successful outcomes. I am pleased to offer my support and endorsement to Roots & Rivers as an excellent choice to help organizations through their strategic, goal setting, and/or culture-setting processes.

Roots & Rivers was a pleasure to work with. Their team is thoughtful, highly competent and efficient. They supported our team to develop a strategic plan that will no doubt increase the impact of our future work.

Working with Roots & Rivers has been an extremely valuable process. Their team encouraged us to ask the difficult questions, and then to sit in our silence until we answer them in a meaningful way. Roots & Rivers was able to draw out reflections about our work that most likely wouldn't have come up without their involvement.