Collective Action for an Antiracist Future
Welcome.
Let's build something together.
An inclusive community • a stronger partnership • an antiracist workplace • trust • a strategic vision • a powerful movement • a grassroots organization • hope • an effective collaboration • a beautiful space • justice • a sense of abundance • resilience • an equitable process • healing • a peaceful neighborhood • our connection to nature • the voice of lived experience • a reason to celebrate • solidarity • a new wave of leaders • our capacity to imagine • gratitude • a shared story • a measurable impact
Hello!
My name is Abha Thakkar, and I am a social change practitioner and owner of Mosaic LLC, a consulting firm that specializes in organizational development, facilitation, coaching and strategy for grassroots movements, collective impact initiatives, nonprofits and local government through an antiracist lens. I have spent the last 20+ years as a community organizer, nonprofit administrator, trainer and convener of systems-level work. I bring a unique combination of skills and experience to every project, including grassroots leadership development, collective action, non-extractive public engagement, food systems resilience, community journalism, solidarity economics, restorative justice, and nonprofit operations, including fiscal management and policy and process development.
Offerings
Collective Impact Coordination for
Systems Change
So many of the issues our community faces are both broad and deep, requiring cross-sector partnerships to address. But effective collaboration does not happen by accident. It requires an intentional and transparent co-creation of vision, culture, decision-making processes, operational policies and communications infrastructure that account for power differentials and diverse ways of knowing. Collective impact efforts often benefit from a backbone organization that can support the collaborative space. Get in touch - this work is a particular source of joy for me.
Relational Harm Repair, Healing & Team Building
Harm and conflict can happen in any setting - even when organizations do their best to build a strong, restorative culture. Rather than blame and shame, we'll work with you to listen, learn from and repair what has happened in the context of our intersectional identities. We will center relationships around your shared mission in order to build trust, create an inclusive organization and foster collective ownership. I use a variety of virtual and in-person tools that recognize the whole person, including 1:1 and small group conflict transformation, circle process, retreats and forest therapy.
Nonprofit Administration & Systems Development
From human resources (that employee handbook!), technology tools and communication to budgeting, fundraising and financial management to program development, implementation and evaluation, we'll work together to assess and shore up your processes through an antiracist lens. You'll get concrete tools and templates that your staff will be trained in and can actually use to run a healthy, responsive organization. The goal is three-fold: to amplify your impact, to be fiscally responsible and to be an exemplary employer while you do it.
1:1 Executive Coaching, Organizational & Grassroots Leadership Training
Leadership is a complex and nuanced skill, deeply grounded in relationship, supported by good process and practiced at every level of an organization in different ways. I offer training for executives, program directors, supervisors, entry-level staff, board members, volunteers and grassroots leaders, including 1:1 coaching, one-time topical workshops, series and cohort-based learning modules. Subjects can range from nonprofit management to meeting facilitation to self-care. We will work together to develop a training plan that meets your needs.
Visioning,
Strategic Planning & Implementation
With 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, I am deeply wary of strategic plans with exorbitant price tags that simply gather dust. Any visioning or strategic planning process should be highly practical, resulting in a clear discernment tool for your leaders and based on informed consent from your various stakeholders. We will work together to design an accessible process with a heavy emphasis on implementation and check-in points that account for shifting circumstances (like pandemics, racial justice uprisings and economic downturns). In the end, my goal is to help you accomplish your goals.
Amplifying Resident Voice in Public Process
Community engagement... resident voice... lived experience. These are all buzzwords that we feel an authentic commitment to but struggle to actualize. How to partner with the people most impacted by the work we do, whether we are a grassroots group, a nonprofit or a government agency, and how to do so in a non-extractive, mutually enriching way? I will work with you to explore who you need to engage, how you build the trust and infrastructure to do so and then how you respond to what they tell you. This work comes with a warning: there are no quick fixes here but there is room for learning, innovation and connection.
Community Organizing Training & Advocacy Campaign Design
My first lens on change-making work was as a community organizer, and it forever altered the way I understand the world. Organizing teaches us about building relational power as a counterpoint to the traditional institutions of organized money and hierarchy. And once you've built that power, effective advocacy is the result of both a clear understanding of strategy and tactics in the context of your power and a commitment to reflective practice in the use of that power - so that we are working to dismantle, rather than reinforce, white supremacy culture.
Equity-Driven Public
Policy & Process Development
Do you have an outward facing process that's fraught with harmful dynamics that have repeated themselves over and over? Reaching only the "usual suspects," perpetuating the same patterns, concentrating power in the same hands, while leaving marginalized voices unheard and their needs unmet? Let's examine what we can do differently through the lens of intersectional justice. This analysis is particularly critical around resource allocation and service delivery with public funds - equity and accountability both matter and can co-exist.
Facilitation for Internal and External Initiatives
Organizations can often benefit from an outside facilitator, whether that's for an ongoing change team process that's tackling inequity in policy and practice; an internal meeting on a controversial subject; or a community meeting after an incident of violence. The work of holding space around complex topics is often highly sensitive and relational.
I work with groups to design the overall strategy and experience so we can best maximize your resources and our collective impact.
Board, Executive Director, Staff & Client Dynamics
Is your organization looking to truly dismantle white supremacy culture from within? How do we balance the fiduciary responsibilities of a board with the lived experience and accumulated knowledge of the organization's executive director, staff and clients when it comes to decision-making, strategic planning and program direction? This line of inquiry is for organizations who wish to engage in a robust examination of who holds power and why in the context of the intersectionality of our roles and identities. It requires a deep commitment to liberatory practices and a willingness to explore new ways of relating to one another. This work can be especially critical during leadership transitions.
Leadership Transition Support
Leadership transitions are among the most vulnerable moments in an organization, whether that's a change in board leadership, executive director or a key management position. It's a time of tremendous opportunity but is often characterized by heightened anxiety and accompanied by unnecessary upheavals, lost knowledge, breaches of trust and, while the dust settles, a potential disruption of programs and services. An outside facilitator can help ease the stress by giving those who are staying and those who are arriving a neutral party to work with to negotiate the complexity and change associated with transition.
Whatever it takes...
It is to tend you as you come into being, like a new world, that causes me to stay, gives me a purpose. Of course I thank you for that… for letting me help.
~ Rumi
Food systems resilience, solidarity economics, violence prevention,
land use, storytelling and community journalism, trauma-informed care, parent cafes, place-making, community-based mental health interventions, etc., etc.
My interests, admittedly, run amok.
I have had the privilege of doing work in a number of areas that I am passionate about. If we find alignment on a project, I will work to put a team together to get us where we want to go. I can also support grant-writing and fund development in order to expand our resource base.