About Us

What We Believe

We believe we are successful when communities and governance are successful. We believe existing and emerging issues coupled with the fast pace of change communities face today calls for the highest level of innovation, expertise and wisdom to navigate building positive futures. The Cascade Center for Community Governance believes strong community vitality is essential in building social, economic and natural resource capital and this is best achieved through high levels of civic engagement and governance excellence.

Cascade Center for Community Governance Vision

is high level and productive civic engagement that results in increased social, economic and natural resource capital and vitality.

Cascade Center for Community Governance Mission

is to cultivate the seedbed in which new and better models of community can grow and flourish. This mission is accomplished by delivering affordable quality education, technical assistance, and consulting focused on stewardship, cooperation, policy development and organizational vitality for communities, organizations, and groups.

The Center’s success rests on its commitment to the Core Values:

Stewardship

– Most effective governance comes from stewardship and high levels of civic engagement.

Community

– Vibrant communities are investments for the future.

Civil Society

– Civil society’s networks and associations are the backbone of the vitality of public life.

Excellence

– Dedication to excellence builds rewarding and lasting success.

The Cascade Center

The Cascade Center for Community Governance is a global education, technical assistance and consulting non-profit organization. We are the trusted partner to local, state, national and global organizations, governments, and businesses invested in improving their capacity to governance.

We help leaders make distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements to the performance of their organizations, goals, and visions. We tackle their most difficult issues and serious challenges. We often partner with organizations, individuals and others, who share our commitment to strengthening civil society, community and stewardship through high degrees of excellence. We foster positive and productive work environments that include opportunities for growth.

• We’re about local and global –shaping impact.
• We’re about fostering stewardship and supporting servant leadership.
• We’re about discovering innovative solutions and creating new models for communities to flourish.
• We’re about growing and sustaining new levels of cooperation that results in building new resources.
• We’re about people and groups with passion for positive futures

We have unparalleled depth of expertise. Our scale, scope, and knowledge allow us to work with a wide range of issues. We are a network of practitioners, scholars, leaders and managers, who are passionate about taking on challenges that matter to communities, organizations, and groups.

What We Do

Our clients call us when they have pressing issues – whether it is a major strategic or operational need or curiosity about how to best tackle an emerging problem. They look to us for sound, practical, objective, and experienced assistance.

Our clients partner with us when they are invested in making positive change and wish to deliver sustainable results. They call on us when times are uncertain and when they want to continually improve their efforts. They connect with us when issues are uncertain and information and insight are scarce.

With our broad base of experienced staff, we custom design a team of expertise to work with our clients. We help people, organizations, governments, and groups explore opportunities, develop solutions, and maximize resources. We work with research-based information and facts to provide the best possible learning environments to create solutions tailored to the unique community needs.

Broadly, our services focus on bettering governance in two ways:

• Improving civic engagement through individual and organizational:
  • Servant leadership and
  • Stewardship; and
• Improving community capacity through:
  • Cooperation and collaboration,
  • Policy development, and
  • Organizational development and vitality.

Our services are based on these core operating principles:

• Cultivating co-learning environments - We partner with our clients to find and solve the most critical and challenging issues. In the face of today’s fast pace of change, many issues emerge on new frontiers and call for bringing together research, experience and exploration to identify and implement innovative solutions.
• No one knows the community better than the community – We respect the knowledge, wisdom and culture of community and realize our role is to partner in ways that continue to position the community for future success.
• Innovation is the cornerstone to sustainability – Our staff and partners bring their best thinking to our clients and work to cultivate innovation as a means to build knowledge and sustain improvement.
• Build enduring partnerships – We seek to build long term partnerships with our clients through trust. We do this through our service, professional conduct, and commitment.

Who We Are

Founded in 1988, we have worked with over 5,000 local, state and national organizations, governments, and groups in the United States and over 300 in 18 countries worldwide.

We are trusted professionals experienced in consulting, providing technical assistance education for non-profit and for profit businesses, organizations, governments, groups, and agencies. Most of our staff holds at least 20 years of experience in governance issues such as leadership and community development, business administration and management, policy leadership and development, planning and organizational development, and building and sustaining collaborations. Collectively staff are problem solvers and vision builders with a passion for excellence. We are intellectually curious and highly collaborative. We operate in high functioning and high co-learning team environments.

Our staff comes from broad backgrounds with rich experiences and areas of expertise. We are a network of leaders with integrity, creativity, with sharp critical thinking skills and abilities to work with people at all organizational and community levels. We believe and operate in teamwork and collaboration. We come to better answers in teams than as individuals. We share problem-solving and vision-building approaches where all opinions and options are conserved, researched and developed carefully.