Strategy, management and results for organisations that drive change.
Alisio is a consulting firm for humanitarian and development organisations. We help them become sustainable, diversify their funding, govern their partnerships well and demonstrate verifiable results, through ready-to-use tools, fixed-price express services and tailored consulting. We work remotely, in Spanish and English, from Latin America for the world.
Contact Alisio See express servicesWhy Alisio
We come from management, not theory. Our team has led programmes, consortia and monitoring and evaluation systems in Latin America and in global roles, and has worked directly with the donors that sustain the sector today: ECHO and the European Union, AECID and AICS, USAID/BHA and PRM, BMZ, Sida, Norwegian cooperation, FCDO, United Nations agencies such as UNHCR, WFP, IOM and UNFPA, and private foundations such as Hilton and Ford.
Our name comes from the trade winds, alisios in Spanish: the steady winds that made it possible to set a course and cross the ocean. That is what we aim to be for every organisation: a firm, sustained direction, not a passing gust.
- More than fifteen years leading humanitarian and development programmes in the field and at headquarters.
- Consortia of up to sixteen organisations, international and local, coordinated under a single compliance framework.
- Nationwide MEAL systems designed and implemented, including accountability mechanisms to affected populations.
- Multi-donor portfolios with more than a dozen institutional donors, from design to close-out.
- Legal background in human rights and international refugee law, applied to contracts, partnerships and compliance.
- Safeguarding and safe programming: experience as PSEA and protection mainstreaming focal point.
Six practices, one firm
- Strategy and institutional sustainability
- Strategic planning, funding model, diversification of the humanitarian and development portfolio, sustainable organisational structure, growth and positioning. To stop depending on a single donor or project.
- Resource mobilisation
- Donor intelligence, concept notes and full proposals, senior review before submission, and relationships with institutional donors, agencies and foundations.
- Programmes, consortia and partnerships
- Consortium governance, partnership agreements and partner management, localisation, inter-agency coordination, project start-up, contract amendments and close-out.
- MEAL, evaluation and learning
- Monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning systems; mid-term and final evaluations against OECD-DAC criteria; baselines; data management and visualisation.
- Compliance, quality and safeguarding
- Donor compliance, partner due diligence, audit and expenditure verification readiness, PSEA, safeguarding and safe programming.
- People and organisational culture
- Organisational climate, leadership and senior team development, structure and roles, nationalisation of positions and support to country management teams.
Express services, with fixed scope and price
- Express proposal review
- A full critical read through the evaluator's eyes: section-by-section comments, disqualification risks and prioritised improvements, plus a 30-minute call. Delivered within 48 hours. USD 450 · Request
- Budget and eligibility review
- Line-by-line review against donor rules: eligibility, ceilings, cost allocation across donors and consistency with the logframe. Delivered within 72 hours. USD 350 · Request
- Donor report review
- Interim or final report reviewed before submission: consistency with the proposal and budget, indicators, deviations that need justification, and tone. Delivered within 72 hours. USD 300 · Request
- Brújula express strategy session
- Ninety minutes with senior management to assess the organisation's sustainability across six dimensions and leave with three prioritised decisions; recommendations note within 48 hours. USD 250 · Request
- Express partner compliance check
- Desk review of an implementing partner against donor requirements, with a gap map and a plan to close them. Delivered within one week. USD 600 · Request
- Tailored consulting
- Evaluations, institutional strategy, consortium design, MEAL systems or support to senior management, within the six practices. Proposal and budget within one week of a first conversation. Get in touch
Our methodologies
Brújula Alisio
An institutional sustainability diagnostic across six dimensions: strategy, funding, programmes, partnerships, people and compliance. Interviews, document review and portfolio analysis, resulting in a sustainability map and a ninety-day plan.
Diversification Route
A six-month process to move from one or two donors to a stable portfolio: donor map, institutional positioning, opportunity pipeline, prioritised proposals and the internal systems that sustain growth.
How we work
- Tailored. Every assignment is designed for the specific organisation, context and donor.
- With a donor's perspective. We know how a donor officer, an auditor or an external evaluator reads a document, because we have worked with them from the management side.
- Rigorous and participatory. OECD-DAC criteria, mixed methods and triangulation, involving teams, partners and communities so that conclusions are legitimate and recommendations are put into practice.
- Ethical. Do no harm, informed consent, data protection and safeguarding at every stage.
- Building lasting capacity. Every deliverable includes the tools and knowledge transfer the organisation needs so it does not depend on us.
Alisio Tools
Templates and working tools built from management experience, for teams that submit and implement institutional grants. The first series covers ECHO, the European Union and AECID and is published in Spanish; later series will cover United Nations agencies, USAID/BHA and foundations.
- Multi-donor budget with eligibility rules, allocation by donor and expenditure tracking
- Single-source logframe that generates each donor's format
- Compliance matrix, partner due diligence, and reporting and amendments calendar
- Coherence and cross-cutting checklist with a traffic-light submission check
The consulting team
Alisio works with a senior consulting team that comes from leading, not observing. Each assignment goes to the profile the work requires, and the firm is accountable for the quality of the whole.
Track record. More than fifteen years in humanitarian action and development in Latin America and in global roles, leading country programmes, consortia of up to sixteen organisations and nationwide MEAL systems.
Background. Law, with specialisation in human rights and international refugee law; project management; design of monitoring and evaluation systems; proposal development for institutional donors; and cash transfer programming.
Experience with donors. Negotiation, reporting and compliance with ECHO, the European Union, AECID, AICS, USAID/BHA, PRM, BMZ, Sida, Norwegian cooperation, FCDO, United Nations agencies and private foundations.
Safeguarding and safe programming. PSEA and protection mainstreaming focal points; experience in protection, gender and gender-based violence, and inclusive programming.
Ways of working. Remote, in Spanish and English, with data tools such as Power BI, ActivityInfo, CommCare and DHIS2, and a commitment to leave lasting capacity in every organisation.