How we work

Our approach

RCC supports partners in driving new solutions from planning to implementation.

Our work focuses on closing the gap between planning and implementation. We help develop and deliver projects while building the partnerships, tools, and systems needed to sustain them.

We collaborate with governments and institutions that continue to rely on 20th-century structures and tools even as climate and socioeconomic challenges keep evolving, supporting partners in implementing the structures, approaches, and methods that deliver better outcomes for communities.

RCC workshop with city and community partners

The RCC approach

Every engagement starts with listening.

We do not arrive with a predetermined list of services a city can pick from.

Every engagement starts with assessment, and with convenings where partners describe their own priorities in their own words. What we design comes out of what they said, not out of a template.

Then we deploy — bringing technical expertise, financing strategy, and our own resources to the project — and build the partnerships and models that keep the work going after we step back.

Our tools and methods are adaptive and flexible, changing with what each moment requires. A city already holding a plan needs something different from one still identifying what it faces.

What stays constant is the sequence below, and that we work hand-in-hand with leaders and practitioners across diverse sectors, disciplines and jurisdictions at every step of it.

From priorities to durable action

Four connected moments guide the work.

Follow the path.

01

First moment

Define and align priorities

Through assessments and cross-sectoral engagement to understand the interrelated systems, strengths and challenges of each place we work.

Analytical tools & frameworks
Strategic plans & roadmaps
Research reports

02

Second moment

Design and launch implementable solutions

From physical infrastructure projects to community programming.

Project design briefs
Concept notes, concept designs
Policy recommendations

03

Third moment

Identify and activate resources

Including the technical expertise and the funding or financing required to achieve impact.

Implementation plans
Subject matter and technical experts
Financing strategies
Funding collateral

04

Fourth moment

Forge new models of collaboration

Between communities, public institutions and private partners to sustain the work into the future, while uplifting and sharing best practices.

Knowledge exchange convenings
Stakeholder engagement workshops
Project alignment facilitation

Which leads to

Accelerated action, sustained capacity

Across all of RCC's programs, projects, and partnerships, our work drives toward two primary outcomes.

Projects on the ground create the partnerships, knowledge, and funding pathways that sustain them. Putting a solution to the test earns a kind of confidence a plan cannot, and that draws financial investment along with the political commitment that follows visible progress.

That investment builds teams, and those teams produce the next round of plans and projects. Each one completed makes the following one easier to fund. Over time resilience shifts from a response to the last disaster to a standing item on the agenda, with the people and budget behind it to match.