Optimal Solutions helps changemakers integrate insights and action for greater impact.

We partner with nonprofits and public agencies to implement community-centered solutions for a more just and equitable world.

When you’re doing your mission-critical work, it can be hard to find and follow a clear path forward. You don’t have to do it alone. Through comprehensive and tailored services, we work together with you to bring your brightest ideas to life.

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Connecting people, purpose, and possibilities for lasting results.

Our Services

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Strategy & Impact

Get from here to there with clarity and focus, data-driven stories, and actionable plans. Build agreement on priorities, measure what matters, and communicate your efforts and outcomes to key audiences.


Training & Capacity Building

Enhance your team’s knowledge and skills, improve processes and systems, cultivate leadership, create a culture of continuous learning and improvement, and more.


Facilitation

Receive expert assistance with planning and facilitation to make your meetings and convenings engaging, productive, and successful.


Custom Solutions

Have a need that’s hard to name? We offer customized assistance and consulting that’s designed to address your specific needs and interests.

Leveraging the power of perspective.

You have the wisdom and will to solve complex challenges.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy or that you have to do it alone. Sometimes, it’s hard to put all the pieces together and see the full picture. That’s where we can help. In working with us, you will gain insights and tools to…

See your team’s strengths and opportunities more clearly.

Understand the challenges and systemic barriers that impact your progress.

Clarify your team’s goals and build agreements and shared responsibility for achieving them.

Increase individual and organizational capacity for continuous learning and improvement.

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Across sectors, we’ve helped organizations and collaboratives advance equity and community well-being with clarity and conviction.

Arts

Behavioral Health

Early Childhood

Education

Environment

Healthcare

Local Government

Parent Education

Public Health

Social Services

& More

Arts Behavioral Health Early Childhood Education Environment Healthcare Local Government Parent Education Public Health Social Services & More

You know your organization is making a difference and you’re ready to amplify your impact.

Start with a free session to see how we can help.

Contact us for a free session

When challenges evolve, values endure. We remain committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice through the ways we work and the types of projects we work on. Whether we’re working with one person or many, supporting a one-time project or a multi-year initiative, our vision of equitable, thriving communities drives our inclusive, collaborative, and solutions-oriented processes.

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Our Commitment

How We Work

Nicole Young has spent the last 20 years facilitating big conversations, training and coaching individuals and teams and leading strategic planning and collective impact initiatives in the nonprofit and public sectors. As the founder and president of Optimal Solutions, her specialty is bringing together people with diverse perspectives and experiences, facilitating participatory processes, and helping groups build agreements and action plans with renewed purpose and clarity.

Meet Nicole