Cultural and Linguistic Competence Consultation

Work Across Cultures for Greater Effectiveness

Fieldstone Alliance works with mainstream nonprofits and grantmakers to enhance their cultural competence to work across cultures, gain greater organizational effectiveness, and better fulfill their mission. As a result, mainstream organizations are able to provide greater access to and quality of services, reduce gaps and barriers to services, capitalize on their organizational assets, and eliminate the disparities evidenced by underserved populations. In order to reduce these gaps and function effectively, organizations must have the capacity to:

• Provide their services to a broad range of cultural groups beyond the traditionally recognized underserved populations, including new immigrant populations;
• Adapt to increasingly complex cultural and service needs; and
• Respond to the linguistic needs of a growing number of Limited English Proficient (LEP) populations.

How we can help
Increasing cultural competence capacity in an organization requires attention to several levels—individual (skills, attitudes, values, beliefs), organization (mission, values, policies, practices), and community (history, communication, relationships). These three deeply interrelated levels contribute to an organization's developmental stage in cultural competence, to its capacity to move along a continuum of transformation, and ultimately, to its strategic thinking and practice around service provision, systemic change, and community involvement.

Fieldstone Alliance’s consultants work with organizations to assess their current strengths and needs and to plan and implement changes at all levels in the organization that will result in greater cultural competence capacity in operations and service delivery. During this developmental process we help:

• Develop the mechanisms needed at the board level (policy and strategy) to help operationalize cultural competence
• Determine changes in program design and delivery strategy needed to provide culturally competent services
• Develop the internal structures and processes needed to address the dynamics of difference and infuse cultural competence at the operational level (staffing diversity, training, policies and procedures, linguistic supports and communication)
• Understand diverse community needs; establish and improve relationships in the community

Other products and services
Fieldstone Alliance provides a range of services including consultation, training, research and demonstration projects, and publishing in order to strengthen the performance of the nonprofit sector. Contact us to explore how we might help you increase cultural competence in your organization or community. We offer:

• Cultural competence assessments, community assessments
• Cultural competence planning and strategy development
• Customized trainings and keynote addresses
• Cultural competence development strategies across networks
• Training of grantmakers and consultants
• Design and implementation of demonstration projects and capacity building  initiatives

Who we work with
We do this work with three primary groups:

• Mainstream nonprofits interested in delivering more culturally competent services and programs
• Culturally-specific nonprofits and multicultural organizations interested in enhancing their capacity and strengthening their operations
• Funders interested in increasing their own cultural competence, or who want to build greater cultural competence capacity among their grantees, communities, or networks of capacity building providers

For more information, please contact Jannina Aristy at 651-556-4651 or email at JAristy@FieldstoneAlliance.org.