We work with a growing number of organizations – including funders, open research projects, nonprofits, and universities. They all share in common a need for expert support in addressing gaps in the human infrastructure elements of their projects. These might include designing a brand new champions program to build capacity, developing engagement skills for project management, exploring emerging governance issues, and training team members in how to give and receive feedback.
You can hire CSCCE staff to provide one-to-one or senior stakeholder consultancy for your projects. We can additionally host private trainings for your organization, including delivering our existing Mini-workshops and courses, or designing custom-built solutions.
Over the years, we’ve experienced repeating themes in our consultancy work and our core offerings below reflect those topic areas. If you don’t see what you’re looking for listed below, you can still schedule an initial consultation with us to see if we can partner on creating something new.
Private training courses and Mini-workshops
- An introduction to community engagement – a five part series of Mini-workshops and office hours sessions.
- Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals – a full private cohort of our foundational training for community managers in STEM.
- Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp – a full private cohort of our popular bootcamp, with case studies tailored to your context.
- Creating Community Playbooks – a full private cohort to support participants in creating core documentation for their community or project.
Find out more about working with us on private training courses and Mini-workshops.
Example projects
With permission from clients, we’ve written blog posts about some example projects (note: this is not an exhaustive list of clients):
- Private cohort of Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals – we ran a timezone specific cohort of our foundational training for for staff and friends of Australian BioCommons. We subsequently ran a second cohort that included community professionals in both Australia and New Zealand sponsored by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).
- Private workshops series on facilitating collaboration and decision-making – a Mini-workshop series delivered as part of the CZI Rare as One initiative’s annual meeting. We subsequently ran a private cohort of our Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp for this client.
- Private workshop on community building and sustainability – a session on community engagement embedded as part of the SORSE Series of Online Research Software Events.
Champions programs
- Champions program design and development – establish a champions program for your community.
- Playbook co-development – build out internal and/or champions-facing playbooks to codify key processes and templates to support program sustainability.
- Hosting trainings for a program – e.g., deliver a private cohort of one of our multi-week trainings or a Mini-workshop series.
- Meeting design and/or facilitation – e.g., develop kick-off meetings and/or graduation celebrations.
- Evaluation and reporting – design, deploy, and analyze feedback via surveys and focus groups.
Find out more about working with us on your champions program.
Example projects
With permission from clients, we’ve written blog posts about some example projects (note: this is not an exhaustive list of clients):
- New champions program design and development – we partnered with the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) to develop a champions program that would ultimately promote metadata standards adoption.
- New champions program design and development (plus online platform development) – in this example project we supported the Michael J Fox Foundation as they launched a new community of practice, and used a new champions program to kick-start engagement in Discourse.
- Launching and evaluating a new champions program, and preparing for follow-on cohorts – we worked with rOpenSci on a CZI-funded project to develop a champions program that empowered historically excluded groups as community leaders in scientific open source projects.
- Delivering training as part of an existing champions program – we introduces core concepts about community building to eLife‘s Ambassadors in order to help them deliver their final projects.
Community strategy development
- Designing and running a focus group to understand member needs around a new community-focused project.
- Planning and launching a community of practice on Slack.
- User persona research – determining your members’ needs and how to create effective, empowering programming that meets those needs.
- Aligning existing resources (e.g., recorded lectures, slide decks, and blog posts) with an engagement or communications strategy.
Culture
- Creating core values statements – a multi-part interactive workshop series to facilitate the co-creation of a new set of core values.
- Creating community guidelines – and escalation guidelines.
- Conflict resolution and team-building – exploring styles of conflict, stakeholder engagement, and planning for successful collaborations.
Find out more about working with us on your community or team culture.
Technology
- Technology selection for communities – identifying the technology needs of your community members or collaborators and how to get the most from that technology.
- Onboarding communications – planning the first steps in the journey of new online community members.
Example projects
With permission from clients, we’ve written blog posts about some example projects (note: this is not an exhaustive list of clients):
- Supporting the design and development of a new Discourse community platform – we worked with the Michael J Fox Foundation to develop the technical infrastructure they needed to host a new community of practice in Discourse. This included customization and design, engagement planning, and the development of scaffolding templates.
Meeting planning and facilitation
CSSCE staff are highly experienced at planning and facilitating events – both virtually and in-person. We work with clients to design and deliver interactive, engaging meetings – especially where there is an emphasis on community-building. Specific examples of projects include:
- Planning and facilitating of a workshop for members of a new community of practice which includes multiple topical working groups.
- Planning and facilitating an iterative strategic planning process for a new community via a series of workshops.
Example projects
With permission from clients, we’ve written blog posts about some example projects (note: this is not an exhaustive list of clients):
- Member research and focus groups – we partnered with the Environmental Data Science Inclusion Network (EDSIN) to conduct a series of interviews (and synthesized our findings) to learn how their member needs had changed in the months following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Working groups and workshops – as part of our role as collaborators on an NSF IUSE grant, we hosted a series of working groups and workshops for instructors at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) with a view to helping students at minority serving institutions succeed in environmental data science.
Our clients
Clients we’ve worked with include:
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We’ve also been included in grants from the following funders:
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Testimonials
I learned about CSCCE just at the right time as we began transitioning away from a traditional marcomms approach to a community engagement approach. The CSCCE resources, staff, and community have since become an invaluable resource both for tactical tips and for a strategic sounding board. I recently contracted with CSCCE to help recruit a senior position and the advice was vital; we wouldn’t have succeeded without their consultation.
Ginny Hendricks, Crossref
To sustainably advocate for open science, greater integrity and equity across science, eLife Community Ambassadors must truly connect with the communities around them. The CSCCE team delivered two excellent training sessions enabling each Ambassador to uncover their own community engagement strategy. Lou and Camille’s valuable insights, flexibility, and personal manner made it a very enjoyable experience that I would highly recommend for all community champion cohorts.
Ailís O’Carroll, eLife
As a new community manager of a relatively new project, it can often be daunting to set and manage expectations. I had already discovered important resources and tools through CSCCE’s fundamentals course and their community of practice, but partnering more closely with CSCCE has been invaluable. Their guidance fundamentally helped me develop an approach to community management with built-in flexibility. This was transformative not only for the success of the programs, but also for my own personal development. I’ve been so lucky to have CSCCE as a thought partner since day 1, and I’m excited for what else we can co-create together.
Pajau Vangay, National Microbiome Data Collaborative