Services

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Climate and Hazard Resilience Planning



For over 15 years, our team has supported multisector adaptation and mitigation projects for federal, state, regional, local, and nonprofit clients. Our approach to resilience is built on equity and sustainability. We support our clients in developing innovative approaches that not only prepare communities for a changing world, but also build a more equitable society. We use a collaborative framework designed to increase capacity through engagement, involving working groups, stakeholders, and communities in each step of the process to identify strategies that enable our clients and their communities to thrive. We collaborate with experts in ERG’s other service areas to bring a powerful breadth and depth of experience and expertise to all our projects from climate science and data, to planning and policy, to implementation, including funding and financing strategies.

• Design and implementation of plans and processes to promote climate resilience and equity
  • Climate policy and planning
  • Climate and environmental justice
  • Resilience plans and strategies
  • Vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans
  • Modeling and mapping
  • Climate action plans
  • Climate and hazard mitigation plans
  • Monitoring and evaluation
  • Decision-making frameworks
  • Integrated planning and policy documents
  • Stakeholder working groups
  • Multisectoral collaboratives
  • Community and stakeholder meeting series and events
  • Communication and engagement tools
• Design of actions to reduce GHG emissions and build resilience and include just transition principles
  • Energy modelling and efficiency for all sectors
  • GHG measuring, reporting, and verification
  • Multisector, multisource GHG mitigation strategies
  • Multisector and single-sector expertise, including land use, transportation, water, and natural areas and open spaces
  • Integration of climate adaptation and mitigation assessments and solutions
  • Assessment of burdens and benefits, identification of actions to advance a just transition
  • Multisector assessments of the quantitative and qualitative costs of inaction and benefits of actions
  • Strategies to reduce risks associated with climate hazards, as well as other shocks and stressors
  • Green and blue infrastructure to reduce risks and foster ecological and community benefits
  • Collaboratively designed adaptation actions to increase benefits to community (including vulnerable communities), industry, and the environment
  • Adaptation and implementation pathways to support decision-making, prompt effective actions, and provide a path forward to adapt over time

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Engagement and Communications



We believe that the best projects and the most effective solutions are founded in partnerships. We design public and stakeholder engagement and participation to directly inform the work and broaden the project team, rather than serving as a stand-alone task designed simply to inform. We work closely with our clients and their partners to develop engagement plans that detail opportunities for the public and stakeholders to participate at various points throughout the process. Our meetings and events emphasize exercises and activities that invite hands on involvement in a project’s work. Our services include a range of tools and strategies to engage and communicate at all levels and to all audiences with a focus on building trust, capacity, and transparency.

Engagement and Participation

• Develop strategies, engagement, and participation plans to build buy-in and foster productive relationships
• Design approaches including compensation, translation services, and childcare to provide services for meeting participants
• Build meetings on a foundation of equity and justice
• Design and manage working groups and committees
• Design and implementation of engagement exercises and small group break outs for deeper participation
• Conduct stakeholder and community relationship and partner mapping exercises
• Elicit and clarify community and stakeholder priorities
• Develop strategies for engaging hard to reach community and stakeholder groups
• Design and facilitate meetings that honor all areas of expertise and ensure that people’s input has a place to go
• Support partner identification and recruitment
• Design meetings to build trust, capacity, and joint problem identification and shared solution development
• Support federal and state partnership programs, working groups, technical advisory committees, and boards and commissions

Communications and Outreach

• Design accessible branding and strategic communications materials based on client, community, and stakeholder input
• Develop communication and outreach plans for the range of intended audiences
• Identify inclusive approaches to communication and outreach, including educational, informing, inviting input or other purposes
• Develop communications plans that are tailored to meet goals and internal capacities
• Draft and create outreach materials and marketing collateral that reflect branding voice and visual style
• Provide logistical outreach support and website and social media management
• Communicate science and data in way that makes it understandable and actionable to improve science-based decision-making
• Draft and execute integrated print and digital marketing campaigns, outreach materials, and social media strategies
• Provide translation services as needed

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Funding, Long-Term Financing, and Economic Analysis



Organizations need diversified and scalable funding to achieve long-term goals and build resiliency against dynamic markets. We evaluate and develop sustainable funding models for varied organizations and goals.

• Identify legacy and innovative funding sources
• Design sustainable financing mechanisms
• Conduct feasibility analyses of alternative revenue streams
• Design philanthropic fundraising strategies
• Formulate concept and cultivation strategies to connect with donors and funding streams
• Provide training and technical assistance to enhance funding and financing strategies
• Design institutional arrangements, effective governance models, and operational controls to maximize utilization of funding
• Conduct natural resource and ecosystem service valuations
• Assess program costing, willingness to pay, and financial feasibility

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Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning



Organizations must continue to learn and evolve to create lasting success. We design and execute monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) frameworks to build organizational cultures of continuous improvement and evaluate programmatic impact. Our work includes an assessment of our client’s current organizational capacity, partnerships, access to resources, and relationships which are critical to the successful implementation of programs, projects, and other initiatives, and necessary to meet their objectives in community and environmental sustainability and resilience.

• Develop frameworks, plans, and tools to assess and measure contribution, causality, and success/impact
• Consider relevant stakeholders to engage in evaluation processes and design solutions for effective engagement throughout the evaluation process
• Design MEL costing plans from local to global scales
• Develop SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) metrics
• Collect social and ecological baseline and routine monitoring data, including through conducting field visits and site surveys
• Coordinate learning sessions for staff, funders, and partners on progress, best practices, and lessons learned
• Design methods for improving performance and enhancing success through adaptive management
• Define and assess economic, social, and environmental return on investment
• Conduct developmental, formative, real-time, and summative evaluations of organizations, portfolios, programs, and projects

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Organizational Design, Governance, and Institutional Arrangements



Highly functional organizations need effective organizational designs, systems, and policies. We help our clients research, design, and implement organizational models that maximize utilization, efficiency, and impact.

• Assess feasibility and alignment of organizational structures and institutional arrangements
• Design governance structures, policies, and organizational frameworks
• Develop operational plans to facilitate growth, enhance capacity, and prioritize needs
• Conduct analysis and develop tools to support information and data-based decision-making
• Facilitate executive and board transitions
• Assess and improve performance and workflow
• Create and implement human capital management tools, processes, and systems
• Support organizational recruiting, training, and professional development
• Facilitate mergers and organizational restructuring, including for-profit, nonprofit, and hybrid structures
• Connect information from diverse sources and distill lessons learned to identify opportunities, needs, and generate solutions

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Strategic and Operational Planning



An effective organization, government program, or initiative needs vision, resources, and the capacity to act. We help our clients build strategies and implementation plans that align organizational objectives, market realities, and available resources.

• Perform competitive market analyses
• Develop feasibility and needs assessments
• Conduct systems and landscape assessments
• Build integration schemes for multi-sector, bilateral, and multilateral initiatives
• Develop financial forecasting models and budgets
• Execute political and demographic trend analyses, including power mapping
• Design and facilitate strategic planning meetings and retreats
• Develop comprehensive strategic plans
• Design programmatic and sector exit strategies
• Develop and improve climate change adaptation and mitigation programs
• Build sustainable fisheries and protected areas plans
• Develop partnership and joint venture strategies and agreements
• Build innovation pipelines within organizations and help future proof programs
• Conduct organizational and cultural equity assessments—e.g., staff surveys, 360 reviews, self-assessments
• Develop diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, protocols, and toolkits

We help to strengthen governance and transboundary frameworks and measures, markets, and management tools to facilitate sustainable fisheries. Our interdisciplinary team also applies a diversity of approaches to support and advance effective coral reef conservation and management strategies, policies, and tools. We work to create solutions to encourage local, sustainable, and community-based resource management, as well as uptake of best practices and cross collaboration between communities, fishers, and other resource users.