The Data Gaps That Are Quietly Costing Behavioral Health Organizations Funding, Trust, and Time

Most of the organizations we talk to already know what they need. They need their logic model to actually reflect their current programs. They need to know whether their data systems can support the grant they're about to write. They need someone to help them make a technology decision without buying something they'll regret for the next three years.

They know the gap. They just can't figure out how to close it within the reality of their budget and their team's capacity.

A traditional consulting engagement (the kind that runs six months, requires a dedicated internal point of contact, and comes with a price tag that could fund a program position) works well for some organizations at certain moments. But for a lot of the behavioral health and human services organizations doing the hardest work in communities right now, that model just doesn't fit.

So when we kept hearing "we know we need help, but we can't take on something that big right now," we took that seriously. The result is Focused Services: a set of fixed-scope engagements designed around specific, solvable problems, built to deliver a concrete output in weeks rather than months, without requiring a major organizational lift to manage.

Introducing Focused Services

These aren't scaled-down versions of larger projects. Each service is designed from the ground up around a particular challenge that tends to stop organizations in their tracks:

• The grant you're not ready to write yet

• The logic model that no longer reflects your actual work

• The data practices that have drifted out of alignment with your values

• The technology decision you need to get right the first time

• The advocacy message your data could be powering but isn't 

The goal is to get you unstuck and moving forward, with something real to show for it at the end. This is just the beginning. We'll be adding more services throughout 2026.

What We're Launching

Logic Model Tune-Up

Logic models have a way of becoming artifacts. You build one for a grant application, it lives in a folder somewhere, and by the time you need it again your programs have evolved in ways the original never anticipated. The communities you serve have shifted. Your team has figured out what actually works and quietly adjusted. But the model on paper still describes the organization you were three years ago, and you're using it for grant applications, board reports, and strategic planning as if it still fits.

In a single 4-hour facilitated session, we work with your team to identify where your resources, activities, outputs, and intended outcomes have drifted out of alignment and bring them back together. You leave with:

• A logic model that reflects what you actually do today

• A clear, legible connection between your work and your results

• A tool that actually supports your strategy rather than collecting dust in a grant file

Best for: Organizations preparing for strategic planning or major grant applications
You get:  A refreshed logic model that reflects what you actually do and shows funders the clear connection between your work and results
 Format:  Single 4-hour facilitated session

Grant Readiness Check

There's a question that appears in almost every significant grant application: describe your data collection and reporting systems. It's easy to write something that sounds reasonable in the moment, something technically true, with a plan to sort out the details if you get the funding. The problem is that funders have seen that approach before. They ask because they need to know you can actually deliver on what you're proposing, and gaps in your systems become very visible very quickly once reporting starts.

Over two 90-minute working sessions across two weeks, we assess your programmatic, evaluative, and fiscal structures against what you're promising funders. You walk away with:

• A clear readiness scorecard

• Identified risk flags before funders find them

• A prioritized action list to close the gaps

It's a much better conversation to have internally now than with a program officer six months in.

Best for: Organizations eyeing a significant funding opportunity
You get: A short readiness scorecard, risk flags, and a prioritized action list to strengthen your grant management readiness
Format: Two-week sprint with document review and two facilitated working sessions

Data Equity Review

Communities know the difference between being served and being studied. They've learned to read the signals: who's asking, what they're asking for, and whether anyone who looks like them has ever actually benefited from answering these questions. When the answers aren't clear, they opt out. So when a large percentage of your respondents decline to share demographic information, that's not a data collection failure. It's a trust deficit showing up in your spreadsheet.

The Data Equity Review helps organizations understand what's actually driving those gaps: what history your community carries into every interaction with you, what your data practices communicate even when your intentions are good, and what it actually takes to build the kind of trust where people feel safe being counted.

Over three facilitated sessions across three weeks, we assess how you collect, analyze, and report data through an equity lens. The process is structured and practical:

Week 1: Collection practices
Week 2: Analysis and interpretation
Week 3: Reporting and recommendations

You leave with a written report covering equity gaps, recognized strengths, and actionable next steps grounded in where your organization actually is.

Best for: Organizations committed to equity who want to ensure their data practices align with their values
You get:  A written assessment report with equity gaps and strengths, plus actionable recommendations to strengthen equity-centered decision-making
Format: Three-week sprint with document review and three facilitated interviews or focus groups

Asking the Right Questions Before Tech Purchases

Every organization in this sector has at least one technology story that didn't go well. The database that didn't fit how your team actually works. The platform that sounded exactly right in the demo and became a recurring headache in practice. The implementation that took far longer and cost far more than anyone anticipated. Usually, the problem wasn't the technology itself. It was that the procurement process started before anyone had clearly defined what the organization actually needed.

This four-week sprint helps you get that clarity before you talk to a single vendor. We work with your leadership team to nail down:

• Your functional and data requirements

• How new technology would interact with your existing workflows

• A governance framework so accountability doesn't fall through the cracks after implementation

You leave with a precise requirements document, workflow and process gap maps, and a clear framework for evaluating what vendors are actually offering against what you actually need.

Best for: Leadership teams considering a new database, CRM, or evaluation platform
You get: A precise requirements document, workflow and process gap maps, and a clear accountability framework to reduce implementation risk
Format:  Four-week sprint with facilitated working sessions

Using Data for Advocacy Training

Most organizations working on policy change or community mobilization are sitting on more persuasive material than they realize. They have data about outcomes, about who they serve, about what the community is experiencing. What they don't always have is a clear method for translating that data into messages that move the people who need to hear them: policymakers, funders, the public.

Data presented without narrative tends to land flat. Narrative without data tends to get dismissed. The skill is in combining them in a way that's both credible and compelling.

This 3-hour training builds that capacity. We cover how to:

• Identify your audience and what they actually need to hear
• Connect your operational data to larger questions of mission and public need
• Develop a narrative that holds up under scrutiny
• Make sound ethical decisions about what data to use and how to present it

You leave with practical skills your team can put to work in your next advocacy effort.

Best for: Organizations working on policy change or community mobilization

You get: Skills to identify audiences, connect operational data to mission and public need, develop data-backed narratives, and apply ethical decision-making in data use

Format: Single 3-hour training session