Qualitative research · Co-design · Evaluation

The community voice on your team.

Alma Major is a women-owned qualitative research and co-design firm. Planning firms, evaluators, city and county governments, and universities bring us in to design and run the listening: focus groups, co-design workshops, and qualitative evaluation that turn what people say into decisions.

Name us in your proposal → See our capabilities
Women-owned small business Based in Baltimore City

Who's bringing us in?

Your qualitative and engagement subcontractor.

You lead the plan, the evaluation, or the assessment. We own the listening inside it and hand back findings your team can build on.

  • ProposalBios, past performance, scope language, and a budget within days
  • FieldworkFocus groups, interviews, and co-design sessions in community settings
  • DeliveryCoded data, synthesis, and findings written to fit your report
Past clients Gates Foundation Johns Hopkins InterAction Women in Global Health Member, Design Justice Network

What we add to your team

Depth where the numbers stop.

Surveys and models tell you what is happening. We find out why, from the people living it, and we design the solutions with them. That is the piece larger teams most often need a specialist for.

Sectors we serve
Public planning & city governmentHigher educationGlobal healthPhilanthropyHumanitarian & advocacyTechnology

Core capabilities

Qualitative evaluation

Find out what's working, for whom, and why, while there's still time to adjust. We design and run the qualitative strand of mixed-methods evaluations.

Program evaluationDevelopmental evaluationTheory of changeLearning agendas

Co-design & community engagement

Workshops where residents, staff, and partners shape the plan or program with you, including the people who usually go unheard.

Co-design workshopsPublic engagementAdvisory boardsComprehensive plans

Focus groups & listening sessions

Recruitment, facilitation, and analysis in the setting that fits: community centers, city halls, campuses, workplaces, or online.

Focus groupsListening sessionsIn-depth interviewsThematic analysis

Also on our bench

Organizational assessment

Staff and stakeholder listening for culture, climate, and reorganization studies, with clear priorities for what to change first.

Climate surveyStaff focus groupsStakeholder engagement

Ethnography & audience insights

Deep research into the habits, beliefs, and context behind people's choices, across cultures and markets.

Field researchCross-cultural synthesisBehavioral insights

Training & capacity building

Build listening and research skills inside your team or your grantees, so the work continues after we step back.

Staff trainingFacilitation coachingToolkits

Capability statement

Everything a proposal team needs.

The facts you need to add us to a team, in one place. Ask for the one-page PDF version and we'll send it the same day.

Company

Alma Major

Ownership
Women-owned small business, founded and run by Meg Kemp
Based
Baltimore City, Maryland, working across the Baltimore–DC region, nationally, and internationally
Sectors
Public planning (city, county, and state governments), higher education, global health, philanthropy, humanitarian and advocacy organizations, technology
Contact
meg@almamajor.com

Certifications & registrations

  • Maryland Small Business Reserve (SBR) In progress
  • Maryland MBE, women-owned In progress
  • SAM.gov registration In progress
  • UN Global Marketplace (UNGM) In progress

NAICS codes

541720Research and development in the social sciences 541611Management consulting 541910Marketing research and public opinion

Differentiators

  • Senior researchers run every session. No hand-off to junior staff.
  • Trained in behavioral science and qualitative methods at Temple University and Johns Hopkins.
  • Equity-centered methods that reach people standard outreach misses.
  • Fixed-price focus group packages, plus hourly and daily rates for teaming.
  • Flexible studio model that scales with trusted collaborators.

Rates for subcontracted work are quoted per proposal. Fixed-price packages are listed below.

Past performance

Listening at every scale.

From a global strategy team to an advocacy network, the work is the same at its core: hear from the right people and turn it into something leaders can act on.

Client
Global technology company, strategy group
Markets
Three regions across North America, Europe, and South Asia
Our role
Ethnographic analysis and synthesis, embedded with the client's strategy team
Methods
In-home ethnography, cross-cultural synthesis, insights reporting, stakeholder readouts

Making sense of emerging behaviors across three markets

A global strategy team needed to understand how people's habits were shifting in very different cultural contexts, and they needed answers fast. We joined the team mid-project, as a specialist inside a larger effort, and turned a large volume of raw field material into clear, comparable insights across regions.

Our deliverables gave senior stakeholders a shared picture of what was changing and why, so they could carry the findings into strategic planning.

OutcomeLeadership called the work pivotal to the project's success.

Philanthropy

Gates Foundation

User research and design partnership with a product team, balancing what users needed with what the business required.

User researchCo-designProduct strategy

Global health · Academic

Johns Hopkins

Qualitative research and co-design in global health, grounded in the behavioral science methods Meg trained in at Johns Hopkins.

Qualitative researchGlobal health

Humanitarian

InterAction

Research and stakeholder input to guide a redesign for an alliance of international NGOs.

Stakeholder researchRedesign

Advocacy

Women in Global Health

Positioning work that helped the organization mobilize its network of advocates for gender equity in health.

StrategyNetwork engagement

Teaming

Bring us in before the RFP drops.

Teams come together in the weeks before a deadline. Talk to us early and we'll help shape the engagement or evaluation approach, then be ready to deliver it.

  1. Before the RFP

    Intro call

    Tell us what you're tracking. We'll say quickly whether the qualitative or engagement scope is a fit.

  2. Proposal

    We write our part

    Approach, staffing, bios, past performance, and budget for our scope, formatted for your submission.

  3. Award

    In the field fast

    We join your kickoff, align on the plan, and start recruitment and fieldwork on your schedule.

  4. Delivery

    Findings that fit

    Analysis and writing that slot into your report, plus readouts for your client when you want them.

Ready-to-go package

The Focus Group Study.

A fixed-scope, fixed-price study for agencies and organizations that need to hear from staff, residents, or an audience and walk away with decisions. Primes can also add it to a proposal as a defined line item.

Essentials

$20K

One audience · about 6 weeks

  • Research plan and recruitment approach
  • Discussion guide
  • 4 facilitated focus groups, virtual or in person
  • Findings report and leadership readout

Standard Most requested

$35K

Up to two audiences · about 8 weeks

  • Everything in Essentials
  • 6 to 8 focus groups
  • Comparison across groups, such as residents and staff
  • Action-planning workshop with your team

Expanded

$50K

Multiple audiences · about 10 weeks

  • Everything in Standard
  • Up to 10 focus groups
  • Follow-up interviews or a short survey
  • Board-ready summary and 60-day check-in

Recruitment incentives, translation, and travel are billed at cost. Need something in between? We'll scope it with you.

From our partners

What it's like to work with us.

Alma Major has been extremely helpful in positioning our organization to better mobilize our network of advocates for gender equity in health. I can't recommend Alma Major's work enough!
Katie GorhamDirector of Communications, Women in Global Health
Alma Major has been creative, clever, flexible, and supremely valuable to our re-design process.
Adam FivensonDirector, InterAction
Great communication and collaboration, always willing to listen to feedback and make changes that meet business and user needs.
Pert LinSenior Product Manager, Gates Foundation

Our values

Inclusive by default.

Standard research and engagement toolkits often skip over the root causes of inequity: poverty, racism, ableism, sexism. We name issues of power early, before the design process begins, so the solution works for everyone it's meant to serve.

ReciprocityInclusivityShared ownershipDemocracyFeminismHumility

We team with firms and agencies whose work does right by people. We don't take on work that supports policing, weapons, disinformation, or human rights violations.

Founder

Meg Kemp

Meg founded Alma Major to help distribute creative power more fairly. She brings a background in behavioral science and qualitative research, with experience across enterprise strategy, humanitarian technology, global health, and advocacy, and training from Temple University and Johns Hopkins University.

Alma Major works as a flexible studio, pulling in trusted collaborators to match the size and shape of each project, whether we're the lead or one part of a larger team.

Team with us

Building a team for an RFP?

Send us the solicitation or a line about the scope. We'll reply with whether it fits, what we'd add, and our capability statement. Agencies and funders hiring directly are welcome too.