Interview Dates: Week of March 23

Decision Date: Friday, March 27

CALL FOR FACILITATOR CONTRACT PROPOSALS

KALAMAZOO NONPROFIT COALITION

PURPOSE:

The Kalamazoo Nonprofit Coalition is seeking a skilled consultant to design, facilitate, and synthesize coalition strategy sessions.

BACKGROUND:

The Kalamazoo Nonprofit Coalition formed in early 2025 in response to sector volatility impacting nonprofits across the community. It operates with YWCA Kalamazoo serving as the administrative backbone, who is administering the funds and support for the facilitator sought. The coalition is comprised primarily of one executive per local organization. The coalition’s mission statement is: Centering nonprofits essential to the well-being of Kalamazoo County, we aim to be a responsive, strategic, and solution-focused collaborative in order to help people and community survive and thrive.

In 2026, the coalition’s objectives are to have:

• Created and followed an advocacy plan
• Increased trust between nonprofits
• Demonstrated high engagement in relationship building
• Demonstrated commitment to community, not competition
• Begun securing alternative funding streams
• Created new avenues for donors to uplift the sector
• Engaged local philanthropy
• Defined shared goals and communication

The coalition will name new or continuing objectives into 2027.

Data collected through the Nonprofit Coalition can be viewed at www.solidaritydata.org.

SCOPE OF WORK:

The Kalamazoo Nonprofit Coalition is seeking a consultant to design, facilitate, and synthesize coalition strategy sessions for 2 years. The consultant will guide intentional, in-person and virtual conversations to further the coalition’s progress toward core objectives. Priority session topics and activities include:

• Collectively generating community agreements, decision-making protocols and structures, and other coalition-defined infrastructure
• Providing opportunities for new members orient into the coalition effectively
• Sustaining alignment on identified objectives and activities
• Establishing structured opportunities for organizations to learn from each other
• Facilitating strategy sessions to identify opportunities for partnership
• Balancing time between committee updates, action items, and planning
• Repairing past ruptures and establishing new collective norms
• Facilitating responsive strategy sessions in the event of time-sensitive sector changes

The consultant will support any preparation needed prior to the session, including session design, communications, materials, etc.

Additionally, the consultant will document and synthesize each session, creating any take-aways, summaries, tools, or other deliverables as necessary from each session.

Deliverables include, but are not limited to:

• 12-15 facilitated sessions. It is expected that the consultant will facilitate a session at least every other month, in-person as much as possible, with potentially urgent convenings when new changes arise.
• Regular check-ins with the coalition administrative backbone and any other stakeholders as identified through structure development.
• Session summaries and deliverables unique to each topic

Qualifications:

• Lives in or around Southwest Michigan. Work to be completed in Kalamazoo.
• Familiar with nonprofit leadership and social services
• External to the Kalamazoo nonprofit network
• Strong facilitation skills, including engaging voices across many identities, personalities, and organization types, and meaningfully advancing nuanced conversations
• Demonstrate high levels of organization, attention to detail, and follow up
• Brings race, gender, power, and social justice lens to the work, grounded in a decolonized, community-rooted framework

TO APPLY: Please submit the following materials to rward@ywcakalamazoo.org:

• Cover letter
• Resume (or resume of the lead individual, if applying as an organization)
• One Writing Sample
• Two professional references who can speak to you or your firm’s ability to complete the proposed scope of work
• Cost proposal
• This can include description of activity, estimated number of hours, cost per hour, and final proposed cost.
• Please break down costs into Year 1 and Year 2