Our purpose...

Civic Strategies helps communities make important decisions. Community organizations and local governments hire us when the stakes are high, the stakeholders are numerous, the answers aren't clear—or when all these elements are present. We design and manage decision-making processes that deliver effective solutions, using fair and open processes.

The benefits to our clients: They get good decisions about important issues that are made the right way and build public and political support.

We do our work by bringing together three disciplines:

• Authoritative issue research that's delivered in plain language
• Comprehensive community outreach and engagement
• Logical decision design and even-handed facilitation

We're more than consultants, though—we're writers, researchers and teachers on the subject of community decision making. The benefit to you: Your community will enjoy the latest, most innovative thinking about local issues and civic involvement.

We've published articles about decision making (in the New York Times and Governing magazine, among others), designed and produced seminars and workshops on leadership, and been quoted in the media about cities, regions and their leaders. (We've appeared in Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal and on National Public Radio.) We've written books about civic leadership, authored blogs, and hosted podcasts.

In short, we know about the issues facing cities, regions and other localities, we’re innovators in public decision making, and we care deeply about communities. Why trust anyone else with your community’s most important decisions?