Program Planning Circles
Small, repeated gatherings where staff, participants and partners draft a program together. We set the frame, keep the record and leave behind a written plan that names owners, dates and the smallest first step.
Community strategy woven in Provo
Good programs are built thread by thread, then finished with care. WEAVE
Naataanii Consulting, LLC is a community strategy and program advisory practice working from a small weaving room at 1319 W 750 S, Provo - 84601-3949, United States (US). We help nonprofits, tribal programs, neighborhood coalitions and public agencies plan carefully, fund honestly and finish what they start. Every engagement begins with listening and ends with a plan the community can actually carry forward. Start a short conversation with our team →
- Planning circles
- Grant readiness
- Board facilitation
- Needs assessment
- Reporting systems
A practice shaped by the loom, not by the template
We borrowed our working method from the vertical loom: you set the uprights first, you string the warp with care, you pass the weft slowly, and you comb each row before moving on. Nobody hangs a finished rug on a wall in an afternoon, and no serious community program is written in a single workshop. Our advisory work follows that rhythm in everything from intake to closeout.
Since our founding, Naataanii Consulting, LLC has supported coalitions working on food access, youth mentorship, language preservation, housing navigation and rural health outreach. We keep our client list small on purpose. A handful of deep relationships serves communities better than dozens of shallow reports, and the loom teaches that lesson plainly: every row rests on the one beneath it.
Six programs on one beam
Each band below is a service we run from the Provo studio. Read them in order or jump to the one closest to your current question. All six appear in full detail on the services page.
Grant and Funding Guidance
We map the funding landscape for your program, draft the narrative with your team and rehearse the budget conversation before a funder ever asks. Applications leave our desk aligned with the plan the community already agreed to.
Organizational Coaching
Regular sessions with directors, program managers and emerging leaders on the practical work of running an organization. We cover delegation, decision rights, meeting habits and the honest conversations that keep a small team whole.
Community Needs Assessments
Listening is a discipline, not a form. We design surveys, interviews, walkthroughs and partner consultations, then return the findings to the people who shared them before anyone uses the data to write a proposal.
Board and Team Facilitation
Retreats, planning days and difficult meetings facilitated by a neutral hand. We build the agenda with the chair, hold the room steady and translate the conversation into decisions that survive the following Monday.
Reporting Frameworks
Funders ask for numbers; communities deserve meaning. We build reporting templates and light data routines that satisfy the grant file while still telling your board, your staff and your neighbors what actually changed.
Weaving, planning, finishing: how a season with us looks
A typical engagement lasts three to six months. In the first weeks we sit with leadership, read your existing plans and reports, and walk the neighborhoods your program serves. That is the warp: the fixed threads that give every later choice something to hold onto. From there we run planning circles, draft the funding story, and coach the team on the routines that will outlast our contract.
We do not arrive with a finished model in a box. Programs built that way bend and crack under their first real winter. Instead we help your staff write the plan in their own language, with their own priorities in the first column and the funder requirements in the second. When the engagement closes, there is a binder, a calendar, a budget and a small group of people who know exactly why each row exists. That is what we mean by the weft comb at the end of every pass: the row is tightened before the next one begins.
Our Provo studio keeps office hours for clients across Utah and the Intermountain West, and remote sessions for partners further afield. Whether you are a two-person nonprofit writing a first federal application or a county department rebuilding a program that has lost its footing, the method is the same. Start with listening, name the owner, set the date, then comb the row flat before moving on. Learn more about the full service line and process.
Who we work alongside
Our clients are usually small enough that one good planning cycle changes everything. Tribal community programs, neighborhood associations, faith-based outreach teams, rural clinics, youth centers and municipal departments all share a version of the same constraint: more need than staff, and less time than the application cycle allows.
We meet that constraint with structure rather than slogans. A planning circle with twelve committed people beats a town hall with two hundred strangers. A reporting routine that fits inside an existing staff meeting beats a new platform nobody logs into. And a grant narrative drafted from the community plan beats one assembled the week before the deadline.
If that sounds like the kind of practice you want beside you, the next step is simple. Write to us with two paragraphs about the program and the deadline you are facing, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit for this season.