The firm works with organisations through a structured, sequential co-creation process that builds institutional and funding strategy from the ground up. Each layer of the process is completed before the next begins — ensuring that what is built at each stage rests on a foundation that will hold. We are also available for standalone strategy sessions, presentations, and facilitated workshops for organisations driving their own process and needing expert input at a specific point along the way.
Institutional strategy engagements begin with a diagnostic conversation to understand where the organisation is in its strategic journey and what the most pressing challenge is. Full co-creation engagements move through five layers sequentially. Standalone sessions focus on a specific layer or a particular strategic challenge. All engagements result in a written output the organisation owns.
Who We Work WithOrganisations that know what they do but struggle to articulate it in ways that land with funders and partners. Those building their institutional architecture for the first time and those whose existing strategy is no longer holding up under scrutiny. Civil society organisations, development foundations, nonprofits, and social enterprises at any stage of their strategic development.
A five-layer co-creation framework for institutional strategy and funding strategy development. The Strategy Arc™ works like a staircase — each layer is a step that must hold your weight before the next can be taken. Each layer indents further as the work deepens, moving from the broadest framing of the problem through to the most targeted, funder-facing translation of the strategy.
Establishes the compound, multi-scaled problem the organisation exists to address — across structural, relational, and institutional registers. Not the problem as it is usually described, but as it actually is — in its full complexity and at every scale at which it operates. The foundation on which everything else is built.
Articulates the precise mechanism through which the organisation's work addresses the problem. Not what the organisation does — how what it does produces the change it claims. The analytical spine of the entire framework. The layer that separates strategy from activity lists.
Establishes who the organisation is, where it speaks from, and why it is credible and trustworthy as the institution positioned to do this work. Not a marketing exercise. A legitimacy argument that locates the strategy in a real institutional history and genuine expertise.
Demonstrates with evidence that the theory of change works — that the organisation's work actually produces the outcomes it claims. Maps proof points onto the theory of change. Honest about what can and cannot be measured. The layer funders look for first.
Translates the institutional strategy into donor-facing language and structure, calibrated to different funder archetypes. The outermost layer. The architecture from which bespoke, targeted proposals can be assembled without starting from scratch each time.
The Strategy Arc Framework™ is available as a structured training programme through the Critical ThinkAR® Academy — designed for practitioners and organisations who need to develop grounded, evidence-based institutional strategy from the inside out.
Strategy built from the ground up.
Owned by the institution
when the work is done.