Services for Funders & New Builders
Helping you achieve progress through irreconcilable difference.
For when you’re ready to move from “what should we DO when we still disagree?” to - holding conviction, leading, collaborating, deciding, and mobilizing better under conflict.
About You
Are you...
1. Struggling to keep your organization functional when values collide?
2. Feeling unable to turn high-stakes disagreement into strategic clarity?
3. In a moment of clarity, but unsure how to operationalize conflict so that future decision-making can survive inevitable collision?
We often talk about leading with values. Naming your organization or coalition’s top values and striving to live by them is important — but it doesn’t help when values collide. What happens when Trusting Partners seems at odds with Accountability? Or when Collaboration clashes with the Urgency of Now? In those moments, leaders need a different capacity: the ability to navigate values conflict.
The Challenge
Charitable organizations like yourself are operating in one of the most challenging environments in living memory.
Polarization, declining trust in institutions, racial inequities, and politicized attacks on the nonprofit sector put funders and service providers under enormous strain. In this environment, the difference between impact and failure often comes down to one underdeveloped skill: the ability of your organization’s board and leadership teams to identify, name, and navigate values conflicts.
Without this capacity:
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Promising partnerships collapse over values misunderstandings.
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Boards become paralyzed, unable to act decisively on contested issues.
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Reputational risks escalate, leading to cautious choices that undermine mission.
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Investments fail to deliver impact, not because of flawed strategies, but because of unaddressed values tensions.
Service
Cohesion Strategy’s Leading When Values Collide programming equips organizations with the tools to turn values conflicts like these into opportunities for stronger alignment, more resilient partnerships, and greater public trust.
Cohesion Strategy helps leadership teams keep conflict productive and act decisively, especially when your stakeholders fundamentally disagree.
We turn values conflict into strategic decision-making tools, helping you:
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Operationalize conflict,
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Create decision-making frameworks that enable momentum through irreconcilable difference, and
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Enable action without requiring shared values.
Offer
Cohesion Strategy offers 1:1 consulting, speaking, and private retreats for applicable organizations interested in immersive capacity-building for navigating value conflicts.
The Leading When Values Collide retreat
Our retreat is designed specifically to help foundation Presidents and Board Chairs reflect on their own questions. In an immersive, confidential setting, participants:
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Gain frameworks to diagnose values collisions before they derail strategy.
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Learn how to talk through values tensions and lead staff through these difficulties without stalling progress.
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Build confidence in making and communicating tough calls transparently.
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Strengthen their ability to partner across divides, unlocking new opportunities for civic impact.
By investing in this program, foundations are not just developing leadership teams — they are reinforcing the very civic fabric their missions depend on.
In short: navigating values conflict is not a “soft skill.” It’s a necessary and urgent core leadership competency for philanthropic effectiveness in polarized times.
Who is this for?
This private retreat is designed for grantmakers across any field who want to strengthen their leadership and board capacity for navigating values conflicts. This retreat is reserved for mid-size grantmakers.
