Greenbelt Alliance

Founded in 1958, Greenbelt Alliance educates, advocates, and collaborates to ensure that Bay Area communities are resilient to a changing climate. It began as a grassroots coalition of Bay Area residents committed to protecting the region’s open spaces, natural lands, and iconic greenbelt from unchecked sprawl. It has been instrumental in the passage of urban growth boundaries, voter-approved protections for open space, and policies that have preserved over 3 million acres of natural and agricultural lands. Greenbelt Alliance has expanded its mission to also prepare communities for climate change impacts like sea level rise, extreme heat, and wildfire risk. One of its initiatives is to promote Climate Smart Housing: Increase planning and production of new homes at all income levels in a way that reduces emissions, climate risks, and impacts on the natural environment.

Issue

What staffing model best fits Greenbelt’s consulting business?

Situation 

Over the last five years, the organization has shifted from primarily philanthropy-funded advocacy to also managing government-funded resilience planning projects. This new consulting-oriented work stream has created management challenges, primarily related to staffing. Greenbelt currently has 8 clients and a consulting staff of 10 working on multi-year contracts with sometimes variable timing requirements. Staff often feels overextended. In addition, in acquiring new clients or contracts, Greenbelt must also deal with unpredictable public-sector timelines and the timing of RFPs and grant awards.

 Project 

Greenbelt is asking for ACT’s help to develop a consulting practice staffing model. This would include a capacity planning framework for forecasting staff availability and workload across overlapping projects with different timelines and funding structures. Greenbelt is open to possible partnerships with external collaborators. If time allows, Greenbelt would like to extend this staff capacity work to create a Go/No Go Decision Tool to evaluate incoming RFPs and other consulting opportunities.