Training & capacity building

Training that survives contact with Monday morning.

Every program is built around something participants have to produce — an evaluation plan, a facilitation guide, a remediation backlog — so the session ends with work in hand rather than notes to write up later.

A speaker addressing a large seated audience
Institute keynote and plenary
Formats

Four delivery formats.

  • Workshop

    Half-day or full-day, 8–30 participants, in-house or online. Practical, exercise-driven, using your own material as the case.

  • Institute

    Two to five days, intensive, mixed cohorts from several organizations. Includes a capstone piece of work reviewed by faculty.

  • Cohort program

    Six to twelve weeks, fortnightly sessions with coaching between them. Built for teams implementing something while they learn.

  • Train-the-trainer

    We certify your internal facilitators to run our curriculum, and hand over slides, guides, and assessment materials you can keep using.

Catalogue

Curriculum, grouped by what you need to be able to do afterwards.

Track A

Research methods for practitioners

Framing answerable questions, study design, sampling, survey construction, qualitative interviewing, and analysis without a statistics degree.

Track B

Program evaluation

Theories of change, logic models, indicator selection, developmental and outcome evaluation, and reporting that funders and boards can read.

Track C

Knowledge mobilization

Audience analysis, plain-language writing, policy briefs, data visualisation, and building a dissemination plan with a measurable reach target.

Track D

Facilitation & engagement

Designing sessions people participate in, community consultation, managing conflict in the room, and running hybrid meetings that work for everyone.

Track E

Leadership & organizational capacity

Supervising research and program staff, project scoping, grant writing, partnership agreements, and building an internal learning function.

Track F

Equity & accessibility skills

Inclusive research practice, accessible document authoring, bias-interrupting hiring, and equity-based analysis such as GBA Plus.

Sessions in every track can be combined into a custom program. Detailed outlines, learning outcomes, and prerequisites are sent with any quote.

How we design a custom program
  • Step 1

    Skills scan

    A short survey and two or three interviews to find the actual gap — which is often not the one named in the request.

  • Step 2

    Outcome agreement

    We write down what participants will be able to do afterwards, and how you will know. That statement governs the design.

  • Step 3

    Build with your material

    Cases, datasets, and templates come from your own work, so the exercises are the job rather than an analogy for it.

  • Step 4

    Deliver and follow up

    A follow-up clinic four to six weeks later, where participants bring what they have applied and what stalled.

Participants seated in a training room during a session
Cohort session in progress
Access

Accessible delivery

Live captioning on request, materials in accessible formats ahead of time, ASL or LSQ interpretation arranged where needed, and quiet-space guidance for in-person sessions.

Subsidised places

Community rates for grassroots and small non-profit organizations, plus a number of fully funded seats in each open institute.

Bilingual options

Programs can be delivered in English or French, with bilingual materials where a mixed cohort requires it.

A day in the room

What a full-day workshop actually looks like.

This is the shape of a typical evaluation workshop. Times shift with the topic, but the ratio does not: roughly a third input, two thirds doing.

  • 09:00

    What are we actually trying to find out?

    Participants bring a live program. The morning starts by turning it into a question that can be answered with the resources on hand.

  • 10:15

    Building the theory of change

    Small groups map activities to outcomes and find the assumptions nobody had written down. Facilitators move between tables.

  • 11:30

    Choosing indicators that survive contact with reality

    Selecting a small number of measures you can collect consistently, instead of a long list you will abandon by March.

  • 13:15

    Instruments and consent

    Drafting a survey or interview guide, and covering consent, disaggregated data, and safe handling of what people tell you.

  • 14:45

    Analysis without a statistics degree

    Working through real data — yours where possible — to the point where a pattern is defensible and a limitation is stated.

  • 16:00

    Reporting to the people who decide

    Each participant drafts the one-page summary they will circulate, and gets structured feedback before leaving.

In the room

What you leave with

A completed piece of work — an evaluation plan, a facilitation guide, a remediation backlog — plus every template and slide deck used, in editable format, licensed for reuse inside your organization.

Group size and pacing

Workshops cap at 30 so every participant gets facilitator time on their own material. Cohort programs cap at 18. Online sessions run shorter, in blocks, never a full day on a screen.

Start a conversation

Tell us what you are trying to change.

Most engagements begin with a 30-minute scoping call. Bring the problem, the timeline, and whatever evidence you already have — we will tell you honestly whether we are the right partner, and what a realistic scope looks like.

  • Fixed-fee scopes with deliverables agreed in writing before work starts.
  • Not-for-profit and community rates, plus pro bono capacity each year.
  • Bilingual delivery (English and French) and fully accessible materials.
  • Every engagement leaves behind tools your team can use without us.