Stakeholder Engagement Services for Non-Profits

You’re an established organization in your community, but lately it seems interest is dropping off.

It’s harder to find volunteers. You aren’t getting many applications to your job postings. What’s going on?

And even if you had capacity to get out there and knock on doors, would your stakeholders feel comfortable telling you the truth?

Or possibly you’ve discovered an exciting new opportunity but your board has asked for a business case before considering your budget request. How can you prove there’s a genuine need for this new service in your community?

Laridae excels at stakeholder engagement that gets you the information you need to run your non-profit and deliver service in the best possible way.

Quick Links

“The methodology and hands-on approach to soliciting, capturing, and analyzing community feedback was priceless to us. Jonathan and Rachel took us on a guided tour of our own organization that helped us to view it from a different perspective–a perspective necessary to help us move the organization forward in a healthy, strong, positive direction.”



– Juli-Anne James, Co-Founder, Streams Community Hub

What is special about our approach to stakeholder engagement?

The stakeholder engagement process is a critically important step in assessing the needs of your community. It is important to be mindful of stakeholder levels of involvement, knowledge, and issue complexity.

Fortunately, Laridae excels at engagement. Through open and honest discussion, we learn about ideas, concerns, and feedback. We feed this back into planning processes as both data and as a narrative, organized thematically.

An Empathetic Approach

Laridae always leads with empathy. We are active listeners. We seek to gather input and share information while acknowledging each person’s unique experience.

Our inclusive, qualitative approach allows us to explore people’s thoughts and feelings in depth.

Experts in the Non-Profit Sector

Because we understand non-profits so deeply, we know just what to ask to draw out essential information while actively listening for commonalities in the stories we hear. We are able to create connections and develop trust.

Trusted Third Party

Very often our clients work in small communities where people are connected in many different ways. It’s often easier for them to share tough information with us than with someone they know. In this way, Laridae becomes a bridge between knowledge and insight.

Creating a Safe Place for Honest Sharing

The structure, framing of questions, and tone of language used for engagement profoundly affects the content and quality of responses. We are always mindful to respect the diversity of your community. We will provide safe and positive opportunities for all involved to give their views.

“Laridae’s facilitation skills ensured that everyone had an opportunity to provide feedback that resulted in both staff and Board being fully engaged.”



– Jennifer Lamantia, CEO, Workforce Development Board


What will you have at the end of the stakeholder engagement process?

  • A clear understanding of the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of your community

  • A thematic summary report that shares Perceived strengths, Identified Challenges and Suggested Responses to guide your go-forward strategy

“They were able to engage the group in a very logical way and stream out information that I believe we, as senior leaders, would not have been able to.”



– Lisa Cranstoun, Central West Development Services

What is it like to do stakeholder engagement with Laridae?

At Laridae, stakeholder engagement is part of many services we offer, from Strategic Planning to Brand positioning. But stand-alone stakeholder engagement projects are useful for setting foundations or reinforcing important relationships.

We have engaged tens of thousands of stakeholders — non-profit leaders, staff, service recipients, donors, members, and community partners.

What do we hear from participants? Regardless of who the group is, they tell us: “We need to do more of this!” Read our post titled, How Often Should you Engage Stakeholders for additional Guidance.

Set Objectives

We begin by setting clear objectives for the project and defining our research goal, whether it’s giving shape to a potential investment or confirming a need has been met in the community or any other purpose.

Conduct Interviews

We then work directly with the right stakeholders inside and external to your organization. This could be staff, your board, your program participants, donors, neighbours – or anyone else with an opinion or information that might add value.

Starting with a basic list of questions, we’ll conduct interviews to draw out thoughts, feelings and perceptions to help us create a narrative that gives shape to the story. We’re looking for anecdotes, examples or even rumours and legends, if they help us understand the situation more deeply.

At times, we’re sharing our own awareness of your organization, creating an opportunity to inform and educate, bridge and facilitate a better understanding.

Report and Recommendations

From here we summarize our findings and feed it back to you. This can be difficult, but it’s always the beginning of the best part: strategy. At this point we’ll offer our interpretation and make some recommendations.


Here for You, Every Step of the Way

We support you at every step along the way.

With tools and checklists, communications tips and project management expertise, working with Laridae means the project will be professionally completed, on time and on budget.

The legacy will be deeper engagement and an increased level of trust.

“The facilitators were able to work with the group in a way that was collaborative and respectful of everyone’s chance to contribute. They efficiently facilitated the process. They accurately synthesized and summarized the thoughts and contributions of participants that captured the true essence of what we as a group had hoped to achieve as the outcome.”



– Dawn McColl, Director, Workforce Development Board


Who has Laridae helped with Stakeholder Engagement?

The following is a list of some of the clients we have recently helped with stakeholder engagement.

Surrey Place
Art Gallery of Northumberland
Peterborough & The Kawartha Economic Development
Senior Persons Living Connected
Sunderland Co-Op Inc.
Town of Cobourg
Literary Press Group of Canada
Peterborough and the Kawarthas Association Of REALTORS Inc.

Take the Next Step

We Can Help

Fill out the form below and we can set up a free, no-obligation discovery call.