Workshops

Matt Biggar, Ph.D., facilitates workshops in person and virtually. Matt is an expert facilitator who carefully designs and facilitates his workshops for a variety of audiences. Workshops are tailored to each group’s needs and include structured discussions, individual reflections, and strategic planning activities. They vary in length from a couple of hours to multi-day retreats. See clips from some virtual workshops here.

Please e-mail Matt at mbiggar@connectedtoplace.com with any questions or inquiries.

Place-Based Systems Change Strategies

This workshop will help you design and implement place-based systems change strategies to achieve the impact you seek at the regional, county, city, or community level. You will learn how to apply systems change levers—shifting power, transforming land use, resetting culture, and leveraging other systems— and utilize systems change catalysts—strategic collaboration, systems-oriented government, place-based education, and personal change— to create transformative, lasting change. This workshop integrates tools and insights from Matt’s Connected to Place book, ongoing work, and research, providing opportunities to apply them to your own work. You will leave the workshop energized and prepared to enact place-based systems change that regenerates nature, community, and local economies.

Audience: advocates; nonprofit leaders and staff; funders; planners; government leaders and staff; elected officials; educators; others interested in change at the regional, county, city, and community levels

Designing Place-Based Collaboration for Systems-Level Impact

If you are interested in helping tackle complex problems in your region, county, city, or community, this workshop is for you. Matt helps participants explore the purpose, mechanisms, and promise of place-based collaboration using examples from collaboratives and collective impact initiatives that he has helped develop, implement, and evaluate. This workshop offers opportunities to design place-based collaboration with representatives from multiple organizations and groups working in the same geographical area. You will leave with the know-how to design effective, efficient, and impactful collaboratives that are built to win.

Audience: leaders and other interested stakeholders from nonprofits, philanthropy, education, and government; elected officials; new collaborative/backbone leaders; new collaborative teams; potential collaborative teams

Implementing Place-Based Collaboration for Engagement and Impact

This workshop will take you and your collaborative team from design to action. You will learn how to continually align through coordination not control, run effective collaborative meetings, keep stakeholders engaged, and gather and use data for shared accountability. Emphasis will be placed on building relationships of trust and value and collective power. You will also learn how to cultivate a network mindset among all stakeholders for maximum engagement and impact.

Audience: new and existing collaborative/backbone leaders; new and existing collaborative teams

Adapting Place-Based Collaboration for Increased Engagement and Impact

Place-based collaboration must be highly dynamic in order to effectively evolve with internal and external changes and address complex problems. This workshop will help you develop an approach and skillset to evaluate, adapt, and improve your collaborative regularly. This involves keeping a pulse on and assessing the collaborative’s operations, relationships within and tangential to the network, and overall progress and impact. You will leave the workshop inspired and enabled to strengthen your collaborative’s operations and relationships, accelerate its progress, and deepen its impact.

This workshop can also be done in concert with an evaluation.

Audience: collaborative leaders and members; backbone staff and teams