Advisory and Consulting Services

Are you a small or medium sized mission-driven organization focused on service delivery?

Organization Strategy and Leadership

  • At Humanessence, strategy is developed initially at each individual level: people, structure, systems, and culture. The second phase of this process requires alignment and harmonization among the different levels of strategy and with the people who will deliver on that strategy—and benefit from it. 

    Our vision for human-centered leadership represents a shift away from individualism, competition, and adversarialism, moving instead toward relational leadership and shared power. 

    Relational leadership emphasizes the need to build positive, authentic relationships between leaders and their employees, recognizing that the quality of these connections is central to leadership effectiveness. Relational leaders understand that human connections are the glue that holds teams and organizations together. They use empathy to empower their teams, fostering the development of new skills and enhancing existing ones, with the ultimate goal of helping employees grow professionally while working toward shared objectives.

    Shared power, in turn, focuses on co-empowerment through reciprocity, complementarity, and collaboration. It shifts the emphasis from dominance to partnership, where mutual support and shared strengths drive success. In this model, power is not about exerting control but about creating environments where everyone can thrive, contribute, and achieve common goals together.

Business Operations and Analysis

  • At Humanessence, we use an organizational capacity assessment tool to identify effectiveness of each of the major organizational functions. The tool is customizable and identifies areas that need improvement or full rethinking. 

    Following the assessment, we present you with a proposed plan to close any existing gaps, including recommended solutions and approaches with required time and resources. The level of business maturity within the organization and ability to commit time and resources often determines how long this process takes.

USAID and Department of State Implementing Partner Services

  • Understanding this approach is fundamental for organizations serving as implementing partners. The ecosystem in which you'll co-implement programming—alongside your client and international partners, including governments, civil society, and the private sector—requires us to center human relationships. By prioritizing these relationships, we can truly understand how to mutually leverage strengths, rather than making assumptions about needs. This collaborative approach is essential for developing and delivering effective, sustainable solutions.

    Whether your organization just received its first contract or grant or has been in the game for a while, Humanessence can support your advisory and staff training needs from the proposal development and all through close out of an award.   This includes advisory and tactical support with:

    • Contract management and compliance with internal policies, procedures, and client rules and regulations, including the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), AIDAR, 2 CFR 200, and 22 CFR 228

    • Proposal development support in strategy, compliance, management planning, and cost and pricing. 

    • Business support in functional areas with specific client-driven requirements in finance and accounting, indirect cost allocation analysis, human resources, procurement, and governance.

Fiscal Sponsorship

  • In 2019, USAID launched the New Partnerships Initiative in an effort to diversify its implementing partner base and include more “non-traditional” partners—local actors, U.S. small businesses, faith-based organizations, cooperatives, diaspora groups, minority-serving institutions, and civil society organizations. 

    For many organizations, one of the biggest challenges is meeting the requirements to work with a U.S. federal agency. This process can feel overwhelming, especially because it might require rethinking your current operations and navigating the extensive regulatory oversight involved. 

    At Humanessence, we believe:

    • Focusing the participation of non-traditional partners—especially local partners—in the design and delivery of international development programming is fundamental to USAID’s localization and sustainability goals.

    • Capacity strengthening is not about imparting “our” knowledge to our local partners. It is about mutual learning, with the understanding that everyone arrives at the table with something substantial to offer and that when synergized, those collective offerings can result in outcomes much greater than they would on their own.

    As a fiscal sponsor, Humanessence offers fiduciary oversight, contractual and financial management services to organizations that are:

    • eager to partner with USAID to co-create and deliver programming, but do not want to adapt their current operation to USAID’s stringent regulatory requirements 

    • interested becoming an implementing partner as part of a long-term strategy but would like to gain experience with the client first with the assistance of a fiscal sponsor

    We anticipate launching this service in the first half of 2025.