About Trellis Partners

Our Mission

We specialize in change leadership for the greater good

Trellis Partners is committed to supporting the creation of a just and equitable society by helping nonprofits strengthen their operations, leadership, and culture to maximize impact on the critical issues of our day.

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About Trellis Partners

Trellis Partners is a national consulting firm that was created to address a resource gap that Founder and CEO Anna Prow encountered time and again while working in leadership positions at nonprofit organizations:

Nonprofit organizations often need a change leader to guide the organization from one stage of growth to another, particularly from start-up to scaling.

About Call Out BoxIn Anna’s experience, most short-term consultants provided critical project-based services, but rarely were positioned to lead enterprise initiatives that led to sustainable organizational transformation. At the same time, Anna saw the ways changing organizational practices and challenging norms was difficult for regular staff and leadership. Anna realized that an insider-outsider, time-bound change leader embedded with the organization could transform these organizations’ ability to set up the infrastructure needed for growth. This insight inspired the creation of the Term Executive model.

Trellis Partners Term Executives have helped more than a dozen visionary nonprofits scale and deepen their impact on a range of issues from expanding renewable energy to achieving equity in public safety to ending genocide.

Our team is passionate about the work we do – and the success of our clients. We are committed to working together to create a thriving social sector that changes the world.

Our Values and Operating Principles

Helping build an inclusive culture in teams, organizations, and the world

We believe that by practicing our values in our work and local communities, we contribute to the change we want to see in the world – the creation of a just and equitable society.

Our values and operating principles are applicable to every level at which we operate:

  • Change leaders embedded with client organizations
  • Trellis Partners teammates
  • Global citizens

VALUES

Value
How we practice it in our work/communities
How it supports the creation of a just, equitable society
Impact
 We strategically choose activities that maximize the likelihood of achieving desired results. Everything we do impacts the world around us so we must make careful choices.
Equity
 We hold ourselves and each other accountable for resisting bias and unfair norms, rules, and practices. Decisions based on equity produce sustainable results.
Compassion
 We seek to understand what is important to others and help them succeed in realizing it. Empathy and benevolence are intrinsic to justice.
Inclusion
 We share information liberally and encourage engagement. People deserve to inform conditions and decisions that affect them.
Diligence
 We are prudent in our decision making and weigh risk, costs, and benefits. Due diligence fosters accountability, fairness, and quality.
Integrity
 We do as we say. Honesty and reliability are essential for building trust.
Impact

We strategically choose activities that maximize the likelihood of achieving desired results.

Equity

We hold ourselves and each other accountable for resisting bias and unfair norms, rules, and practices.

Compassion

We seek to understand what is important to others and help them succeed in realizing it.

Inclusion

We share information liberally and encourage engagement.

Diligence

We are prudent in our decision making and weigh risk, costs, and benefits.

Integrity

We do as we say.

OPERATING PRINCIPLES

Both with our client organizations and in our Trellis Partners team, we:

Look for strengths in every situation

Expect complexity

Welcome diverse perspectives

Make the implicit explicit

Foster learning to achieve transformation

Respond to failure with a level head

Distinguish between urgency and importance

Create “forms that follow function”

  • Look for strengths in every situation
  • Expect complexity
  • Welcome diverse perspectives
  • Make the implicit explicit
  • Foster learning to achieve transformation
  • Respond to failure with a level head
  • Distinguish between urgency and importance
  • Create “forms that follow function”

What Our Clients Have to Say

“The Term Executive is able to inclusively apply solutions that take the organization to another level -- unlock potential that pre-existed but was repressed due to managerial or administrative convolutions.”
- John Prendergast, Founding Director, Enough Project, and Co-Founder and Executive Director, The Sentry
“I wanted someone to come in and work on the process end of things -- bring structure and coherence to the organization. Anna was absolutely the best person to do that.”
- Winnie Stachelberg, Executive Vice President, External Affairs, Center for American Progress
“Not only do Term Executives quickly identify areas of opportunity, they also lay out the steps that would be required to make these improvements. They look at how everything works together--operational, organizational, cultural.”
- Julie Dyer, Chief Operating Officer, Friends of the Earth
“Having the person inside the organization, as opposed to looking at things from 100 feet above, makes a very big difference. The Term Executive is not examining things from only one vantage point. They are able to provide nuance and perspective because they are in the organization.”
- Meredith Gamson Smiedt, Former Deputy Director, Current Board Secretary, Center for Policing Equity

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