Strategic Planning Consultant

STREET LEVEL HEALTH PROJECT

Strategic Planning Consultant

About Street Level Health Project

Street Level Health Project (SLHP) is a grassroots, community-rooted organization founded in 2002 to support immigrant and day laborer communities through health access, crisis response, and community defense. SLHP’s work is grounded in equity, courage, collaboration, and meeting people where they are. Over more than two decades, SLHP has pioneered innovative, community-led approaches—often stepping in where systems fall short.

Today, SLHP is at an inflection point. After years of responding to overlapping crises affecting immigrant communities, the organization is seeking to move from constant crisis mode toward long-term sustainability, shared leadership, and strategic clarity. This strategic planning effort builds directly on SLHP’s existing Organizational Strengthening Plan, which articulates the organization’s values, current challenges, and vision for thriving.

Purpose of the Engagement

SLHP seeks a bilingual (Spanish–English) strategic planning consultant to design and facilitate a thoughtful, inclusive, and practical strategic planning process. The purpose of this engagement is to:

• Clarify SLHP’s mission, vision, values, and strategic direction for the next 3–5 years in this current political and community context
• Align staff, leadership, and board around a shared roadmap that is collectively understood, owned, and spoken — not held by one person
• Support a transition from reactive crisis response toward sustainable, values-aligned growth while preserving SLHP’s deep community roots
• Produce a strategic plan that is actionable, realistic, adaptive to external change, and actively used to guide decision-making

SLHP is not seeking a generic or one-size-fits-all planning process. The consultant should be able to work within the realities of a small, community-based organization with limited capacity, high community need, and a strong commitment to equity and shared leadership.

Scope of Work

The consultant will design and facilitate an approximately 7-9-month strategic planning process that includes, at a minimum, the following components:

1. Process Design & Orientation

• Design an inclusive planning process tailored to SLHP’s size, culture, and capacity, including any necessary pre-work to build trust, shared understanding, and psychological safety among staff and leadership
• Build from (and not duplicate) the existing Organizational Strengthening Plan
• Explicitly account for internal dynamics, differing perspectives, and "inherited organizational inefficiencies and complexities" history among staff and board members

1. Listening and Assessment

• Facilitate engagement with staff, leadership, board members, and select community partners in culturally appropriate ways
• Surface key tensions, tradeoffs, and decision points facing the organization, including:
• Program identity and focus
• Capacity, sustainability, and staffing realities
• Power, history, and participation across roles
• Design engagement methods that are realistic given staff workload, safety considerations, and emotional labor — including options for phased or program-based engagement
• Integrate internal organizational realities with the external political, legal, and community context affecting immigrant and day laborer communities

1. Strategic Framework Development

• Support SLHP in refreshing or clarifying its mission and vision
• Identify 3–5 strategic priorities for the next 3–5 years
• Help the organization articulate what it will continue, grow, stop, or release
• Address alignment across programs and identity, organizational structure and infrastructure, governance and shared leadership, staff sustainability, wellness, and retention, financial and fundraising strategy

The plan should reduce over-extension and support work being held by multiple people, rather than being concentrated in the ED role.

1. Implementation and Accountability

• Produce a clear, practical implementation roadmap (1–2 years) that includes:
  • Priority initiatives
  • Named roles/responsibilities and shared ownership
  • Sequencing and timelines
  • Mechanisms for accountability, review, and adaptation
• Support leadership and board alignment around treating the plan as a living tool that guides real decisions, even as external conditions change

Deliverables

At a minimum, the consultant will produce:

• A written Strategic Plan covering a 3–5 year horizon
• A 1–2 year implementation roadmap with clear ownership and sequencing
• Staff and board-facing summary materials (e.g., slide deck or memo)
• Facilitation of at least one board session and one staff session to support plan adoption and alignment

Required Experience and Qualifications

The ideal consultant will demonstrate:

• Strong fluency in Spanish and English (spoken and written)
• Deep experience working with immigrant, day laborer, or similarly marginalized communities
• Strong facilitation skills, including navigating:
  • Power dynamics
  • Organizational tension
  • Long-standing history and change resistance
• Ability to listen for what is not being said, and to push in firm but culturally grounded and humane ways
• Comfort integrating wellness, care, and embodied practices into organizational processes when appropriate
• A facilitation style that is not corporate, top-down, or one-size-fits-all
• Experience helping organizations make — and live with — hard tradeoffs

Timeline and Budget

• Timeline: Approximately 7-9 months
• Budget: Up to $35,000

Proposals should demonstrate how the proposed scope, pacing, and approach align with this budget and with SLHP’s organizational capacity.

Proposal Submission Requirements

Proposals should include:

1. A brief statement of understanding of SLHP’s context and current moment
2. Proposed approach and process design
3. Description of relevant experience and qualifications
4. Proposed timeline and work plan
5. At least two samples from prior strategic plans
6. Budget
7. At least two relevant professional references

Before applying, consultants should understand:

SLHP serves a highly specific immigrant community, including day laborers, whose realities are often misunderstood — even by people who consider themselves “community-rooted.”

This process requires humility, cultural fluency, and a willingness to learn from lived experience, not just professional expertise.

Submission Timeline

Proposal Timeline Deadline: March 13, 2026

Ideal Project Start Date: April 2026

Questions and proposals should be submitted to jobs@streetlevelhealthproject.org with the subject line: “Strategic Consultant RFP.”

Fluency in written and verbal English and Spanish is a requirement.