Impact Stories

Co-creation at scale: UFacilitate’s five-year partnership with Resilience Initiative

When Resilience Initiative set out to strengthen hundreds of nonprofit organizations, they invited UFacilitate to help walk with them in that journey. Over five years, we co-created programs that gave leaders practical skills, trusted spaces, and a supportive community. This is the story of how thoughtful collaboration and consistent learning helped scale resilience across hundreds of organizations.

The challenge

Nonprofit leaders supporting social justice issues face constant pressures: shifting policies, rising demands, and the weight of caring for their staff. Funders see the strain too, and often wonder, how can one initiative support hundreds of organizations through so much uncertainty? How can they ensure that they can survive and thrive amidst the threat to the rights and survival of the communities they serve?

The partnership

Resilience Initiative, a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, was already creating support for grantees when they invited UFacilitate to join them early on.

They recognized the value we could bring in helping leaders collaborate more effectively, and build the facilitation and leadership skills that could support them in navigating the challenging times under the first Trump administration (e.g. policy changes negatively impacting BIPOC and other historically marginalized communities). For us, this was an opportunity to live out our mission: making collaboration more effective by leaning into the messy, human stuff that defines how groups work together. From the start, our role was to complement Resilience Initiative’s vision by co-creating programs that gave nonprofit leaders the tools, confidence, and community to adapt and grow.

What began as a few early experiments in coaching and facilitation grew into a five-year journey of co-creating, testing, and adapting supports alongside Resilience Initiative and their network.

The journey

Resilience Initiative knew that their mission could not be implemented through a single format. It required different kinds of spaces, some broad and accessible, others more personal and in-depth. That insight shaped the journey we took with them, creating a layered suite of programs that supported leaders at multiple levels:

People & Culture Learning Series: sessions on timely topics such as generational differences, team dynamics, and organizational well-being.
Facilitation Skills & Deep Dive Workshops: targeted trainings that blend practical tools with in-depth exploration of high-demand and practical facilitation skills, equipping participants to apply learning immediately.
Peer Coaching Groups: facilitated spaces where leaders tackle real-time issues together, share expertise, and build trusted networks of support.
1:1 Facilitation Coaching Programs: multi-session offerings that help leaders design and lead more effective, equitable conversations across their organizations.
1:1 Leadership Coaching Programs: on-demand individual sessions with built-in feedback loops, tailored to each leader’s challenges and growth goals.

Each offering was shaped through dialogue with Resilience Initiative and their intimate knowledge of their community. As new challenges emerged, from political shifts to the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked together to adjust, keeping the programming relevant and accessible. This mix of formats created a continuum of support, giving leaders both the immediate tools they needed and the deeper connections that sustained them over time.

This partnership has also expanded across languages and geographies. With UFacilitate’s network of coaches around the world, RI leaders have been able to access coaching in different countries and in their own languages, including Spanish, strengthening both inclusion and connection.

The impact

Leaders from organizations around the United States consistently describe the programs as practical, energizing, and transformative. These are just a few of the comments from the work we have done with over 300 organizations:

“My coach was a great fit, we were able to connect right away around shared values in our career, and I appreciated how organized the process was. The 1:1 coaching really made a huge difference as it allowed me the space to open up and speak candidly to identify where there are sticking points and growth areas for me when it comes to facilitation.”

“We tackle real issues and come up with practical solutions, and it is so refreshing!”

“The Peer Learning/Wise Counsel has been very beneficial to me and something that I look forward to each month.”

“This process was instrumental in helping us transition to virtual facilitation. We became more comfortable with Zoom and learned new strategies to be more effective and engaging.”

“My 1:1 coach was incredibly thoughtful and allowed space for tangents, reflections, and processing. My coaching process focused on facilitation, and she made room for conversations about race, systemic injustices, and other topics that influence meeting facilitation.”

“Our facilitators for our professional development sessions took a lot of time and care to thoughtfully understand our team’s culture, our specific challenges, and what would be most effective for the way we work.”

“My coach is a fantastic listener who helps the people she coaches realize their own potential and ability to solve their own problems. But she’s also adept at offering concrete suggestions for not only being a better leader, but a better person.”

Beyond individual skill-building, participants highlight the sense of solidarity and reassurance that comes from being part of a broader community:

“Seeing similar experiences across different organizations, and hearing that everyone is struggling with —and overcoming— similar challenges, is really reassuring.”

“Group coaching has been powerful for me. I’m very introverted and don’t normally enjoy groups; I chose peer coaching to step out of my comfort zone and I’m so glad I did. Something really dynamic happens in group coaching that I’ve never experienced before, and this new awareness really shifted something for me that I was able to start practicing right away”.

The lessons learned

Working alongside Resilience Initiative reinforced one of our core beliefs: alignment, impact, and resilience are not built through one-off trainings, but through an ongoing mix of learning, practice, and reflection. We saw how important it is to layer broad, accessible opportunities with deeper, tailored support. Leaders valued the quick, bite-sized sessions that met immediate needs, but they also needed spaces for peer exchange and one-on-one coaching to turn ideas into lasting change.

Another lesson was about adaptability. Over five years, the needs of Resilience Initiative’s participants shifted in response to political uncertainty, the COVID-19 pandemic, and internal organizational changes. Co-creating with Resilience Initiative reminded us that programs cannot stay static; they must respond to the realities that participants are living. For UFacilitate, it was a chance to put our philosophy into practice: staying close to the “messy, human stuff” and designing with, not for, the people we serve.

The model

This partnership with Resilience Initiative shows what UFacilitate does best: co-creating with clients to design the right supports for their context. By combining Resilience Initiative’s vision and reach with our expertise in facilitation and coaching, we gave leaders the space and skills to adapt, connect, and thrive.

By providing coaching and peer learning opportunities in different countries and multiple languages, including Spanish, we’ve helped make leadership development more inclusive and accessible to the full diversity of RI’s network.

For us, it is a reminder of why we do this work. Strong collaboration, even when it takes time, can ripple outward to strengthen entire networks of organizations.

Looking Ahead

The challenges will not stop. But neither will the need for resilient leaders and organizations. UFacilitate is proud to have partnered with Resilience Initiative for five years in building this model, and we look forward to bringing the same spirit of co-creation to other organizations ready to strengthen how they work together.

If you would like to explore how UFacilitate can support your network or organization, let’s talk.