MAYA PILGRIM INSIGHTS
When the work is hard, the room matters.
Nonprofit organizations right now are navigating compounding pressure from every direction — surging service demand, shrinking and unstable funding, staff exhaustion, legal and political threats to their missions, and the emotional weight of leading through it all. Most consultants can help you write a grant or build a communications plan.
MPI works in the hard places: the rooms where organizations need to figure out what they actually know about their impact, make difficult decisions under uncertainty, hold together across difference, or find a way forward through fear. MPI brings both rigor and care that this work requires.
Services
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MPI facilitates the internal processes that help organizations metabolize what they're going through — not just plan around it. This includes structured team processes that name what's hard, restore a sense of shared purpose, and build the psychological safety needed for people to keep showing up. It also includes coaching organizational leaders through the specific challenge of carrying their teams through sustained difficulty.
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Drawing on expertise in trauma-informed practice, power-aware facilitation, and complex social dynamics, MPI designs and guides high-stakes processes where the outcome matters and the interpersonal dynamics are real. This includes multi-session engagements that build trust before moving to decision-making, as well as one-time facilitation for boards or leadership teams facing a specific crossroads.
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Evaluation at its best provides insights that guide decisions and direction to best align with our vision, values and communities. MPI can guide you on what is meaningful and feasible to measure your impact. Different levels of evaluation services are available on a monthly basis to collect, store, organize, and analyze data so you can turn them into actionable insight.
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MPI facilitates the learning and relationship-building processes that make partnerships durable rather than fragile. This includes action research that helps organizations document and engage in inquiry centering partners with lived-experience, collaborative sensemaking across partner organizations, and structured processes that surface community knowledge as the foundation for shared strategy.
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Ongoing retainer support is available for evaluation services (Essentials, Standard, and Partnership tiers above) and for organizations navigating sustained periods of difficulty who want a consistent thought partner.
Project-based engagements are available for facilitation, learning projects, assessments, training, and other time-limited work. MPI accepts project-based work as capacity allows.
Our Partners
MPI partners with community organizations, foundations, and institutions deeply committed to social change, racial and gender justice, economic transformation, immigrant rights, youth leadership and earth justice who understand that meaningful change requires both vision and rigorous practice.
Our partners recognize that even in challenging and lean times—when resources are stretched and the work feels overwhelming—investing in meaningful evaluation, healing-centered processes, and liberatory learning approaches strengthens rather than burdens their mission.
They seek collaborative support that honors their expertise while providing the tools, frameworks, and partnerships needed to sustain transformative work through uncertainty and build resilient movements for social change.