Offerings

Aurora Commons is a dual-centered hub of specialized wisdom, embodied practices, and skills used towards a more liberatory future. One of our hubs is ideological: Weaving Liberation of All Beings, which is part of an emerging global effort to shift towards collective accountability for mutual liberation and to get at the roots of the human tendency towards supremacy. Another of our hubs is practical: Operationalizing Shared Power & Leadership, which is part of a national effort to reimagine what it takes to build power for transformation. The ideological and practical are entangled—striving to reflect and integrate each other as well as to champion and stretch each other into visionary praxis.

Aurora Commons exists to empower movement builders to find their best solutions for growth, survival, transformation, sustainability, and joy. We employ tailored tools, analysis, and strategy to allow them to live their values as they grow and transform—while ensuring that people on the margin have a voice and are supported throughout these processes. We use inclusive, participatory, and analytically rigorous processes aligned with anti-racist, anti-supremacist, eco-feminist, liberatory values. Specifically, we nurture equitable, sustainable organizations and networks, support leadership growth and strategy alignment, and lead organizational restructuring and complex systems change efforts. 

Over the last 30 years, we have collaborated and partnered with hundreds of nonprofits, intermediaries, funders, artists, and other changemakers to bring about liberation for humans, other-than-human kin, and the planet.  Here are some of the ways that we have done this:

  • Field-level research on building power, capacity, equity, liberation, philanthropy, and emergent systems change.

  • Strategic planning and development, particularly with an equity and complex systems lens for funders, nonprofits, and non-501[c][3] entities.

  • Leadership development, including executive coaching, leadership transitions, interim co-director advising, shared leadership and leadership teams, board development, and navigation of power dynamics.

  • Organizational restructuring and culture building of organizations and networks.

  • Capacity-building initiatives, learning communities, and creative place-making programs.

  • Contemplative spaces and retreats  to support building power and community to weave liberation for all beings.