The NLG is the oldest national progressive bar association of jailhouse lawyers, legal workers, law students, and attorneys in the U.S. We worked with AORTA to develop a Theory of Change and Strategic Plan through coaching and educational sessions, virtual team workshopping, and a live in-person leadership summit. AORTA provided the theoretical framework, practical tools, and reflective space to understand more deeply the work that we have done and the work that we want to do. This has had a reverberating impact on our organization as the Strategic Plan has created basis for infrastructural and cultural changes that our organization desperately needs to remain effective and relevant in today's political landscape. AORTA blends a diversity of organizational and management tools from a variety of disciplines with radical and revolutionary values that gets right to the tensions that many organizations face navigating the nonprofit industrial complex in the belly of the imperialist beast. As we are collectively on a journey to dismantle the very systems that we operate within, AORTA is an invaluable resource to steward organizations through these contradictions to eventual victory and liberation for all!

Kataly Foundation is a racial, economic, and environmental justice funder in the US. While we have a clear mission to build the economic, political, and cultural power of BIPOC communities and have a majority BIPOC staff, we arrive to this work with different lived experiences and past experience in social justice movements, and we haven't had explicit conversations about how this impacts our experience as workers and as a team. AORTA helped our team to build common language and frameworks around race, power, and identity and held space for us to start having brave conversations about our experiences in the workplace and how we could bring our practices and policies into great alignment with our mission - all in less than 6 hours!

The Amplify Georgia Collaborative is a group of nine reproductive justice organizations working to protect and expand abortion access in Georgia. We have now worked with AORTA twice on strategic planning. They bring deep expertise in strategic planning, coalition design, and facilitation. AORTA leads the entire process from initial data collection and stakeholder interviews, to retreat design and facilitation, to development of our strategic priorities. Each time they have held this process with such care and intentionality, resulting in a plan that moves our organization into the next chapter of our development. It is rare to find consultants that not only bring the skills and tools you need but also lead from the values essential to how you do your work. This is what we have found in AORTA and it has transformed Amplify's work.

Pioneer Valley Workers Center is a workers center with the mission of building power with workers and immigrants through grassroots organizing, mutual aid, and by incubating worker-owned cooperatives. We initially approached AORTA when it was becoming clear that our systems for collective leadership and accountability were failing us, and we were beginning to reckon with the effects of racism and white supremacy within our structure. Dana began by teaching us new systems for democratic decision making and meeting facilitation. She gave us concrete tools and helped facilitate a year-long process of designing our own collective leadership structure, reimagining leadership, decision-making, and roles. Now, after a year of working with her, we face the future with a newly designed organizational structure that all members of staff co-created, and a new confidence.

State of Equity is a non-profit which focuses on racial justice capacity building with racial equity practitioners in the state of California government. AORTA worked with us in our, Capitol Collaborative on Race & Equity Transformative Leadership Cohort (CCORE TLC), which is a new State of Equity program that centers the learning of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. In this journey of piloting a new program, we were seeking skilled facilitators to help us lead our affinity group spaces to dive deeper into the content of each session. AORTA held safe and nurturing affinity spaces for BIPOC participants in our cohort over 3 months and a learning session that helped us dive into understanding power.

Prescription Joy is a New Orleans based Healthcare Clowning nonprofit. Our leadership, board of directors, and clowns took AORTA’s training together and it was amazing to learn so much in such a short window of time! We were able to have meaningful conversations about how to create an environment that we all want to work in-one that eschews the principles of white supremacy and patriarchy. Sunny and Roan did a wonderful job of making participants feel heard and safe to make mistakes and ask questions. We definitely recommend AORTA to any and all organizations, big and small, who want to create a better, healthier, and safer working environment for everyone they employ! We are so grateful for everything! We really feel like we now have a chance to solidify anti-racist structures through humanity and joy. You are helping us deepen our mission.

Eliminating Racism and Claiming/Celebrating Equity (ERACCE) trains people to recognize and dismantle systemic racism in their institutions throughout the state of Michigan. As our work grows, we need internal structures that can keep up. We were reacting to growth with temporary solutions that then became permanent, and it was frustrating, demoralizing, and a drain on everyone's energy. We needed effective facilitation that we could trust to hold our values while moving us forward. AORTA folks facilitated an excellent retreat that held staff while we acknowledged what wasn't working in our beloved organization. From that, we created a plan for consulting hours for the year. The insight and energy we got from AORTA's work inspired us to reorganize staff roles and write a grant that is now providing health insurance for all of us. We weren't sure we could find consultants who would see us without pushing us into dominant culture ways of doing business. We're now planning a second retreat with AORTA and another year of consulting hours. It's good to have partners in the work.

Kairos is a national organization that is building power in the digital realm and making sure that tech works for all of us. Kairos has been partnering with AORTA since 2018. We wanted to make sure that our racial justice values translated into explicit components of our national fellowship program. We have been blessed to work with Autumn Brown who collaborated with Kairos to develop curriculum and training modules that now form the framework of our resiliency political education track of our national fellowship. Autumn is a truly gifted facilitator, bringing compassion, agitation, and curiosity. Kairos emerged as a fellowship program as authoritarianism took root in the White House. Black, indigenous, and other communities of color have been under deepened assault. As our movements have suffered harm has been weaponized. Autumn helped Kairos Fellows and staff to remain steadfast to our purpose and utilize the values we've co created as our guide. Liberation calls for nothing less.

GAIA is a global network of grassroots groups working towards a just and zero waste world without incineration. Initially, we reached out to AORTA because we needed someone that could provide us with some conflict resolution tools, and guidance in creating a conflict resolution process and agreements for the network. This first experience with them concluded with the development of a Conflict Resolution and Accountability Process and Policy that we can refer to when and if a conflict or complex situations arise. The depth of experience and skill that Marc, AORTA’s facilitator, brought to the table set us up for success and allowed us to enjoy the process, learn through each step, and develop what is now a key document for our network. GAIA is an ethnically and culturally diverse organization, and we really appreciated working with someone that had the sensitivity, openness, and capacity to able to set aside a white, western perspective to build an equitable process. We have continued and will continue, to reach out to AORTA to support us in conversations where we need an external facilitator. Working with them is always a pleasure.

Design Action provides graphic design and visual communications for progressive, non-profit, and social change organizations. Over the years, our worker coop has learned the necessity of investing in internal infrastructure to help us build a healthy culture. This allows us to respond as a collective to moments of political, personal, and professional upheaval with resilience, and it lets each of us bring our whole selves to our work together. AORTA has facilitated anti-oppression workshops for us to set foundations for our collective political understanding, and now that they are on retainer with us as our coaching and HR support, we're able to get an outside perspective on dynamics that we want to keep an eye on in our shop—both positive and negative. As one of our members said, "When I feel scared or uncertain about how to have a conversation, or whether the shop has the capacity to hold the space for everyone to find grounding, I find confidence knowing that AORTA is available to help us navigate difficult periods."