Where Mindstake fits

Mindstake is built for decisions and reporting where there are multiple outcomes, multiple stakeholders, and a need for defensible reasoning. The same platform adapts to different contexts.

Four common applications

Investment and grant funds

Many organisations manage contestable funding, investment funds, or grant programmes. These settings often involve many applications, limited funding, high accountability, and a need to compare very different proposals fairly.

Creating a clear rubric that applicants and reviewers can understand
Turning applications into comparable scorecards, with every point linked to its source
Supporting triage, moderation, and committee decisions
Following each investment after funding, measured against its own purpose

Procurement and supplier selection

Procurement decisions often involve more than price. Government, iwi, and social sector organisations may also care about service quality, cultural safety, local employment, environmental impact, and delivery risk.

Using clear criteria and rubrics so suppliers know what is being assessed
Helping evaluators apply consistent scoring across bids, with every score traceable to the bid itself
Providing a clear record of why a supplier was selected

Programme prioritisation

Organisations often need to decide which projects to fund, expand, pause, or stop. These choices may sit across departments, entities, or regions. Mindstake supports this by:

Creating a shared view of priorities across a leadership group
Supporting consistent assessment across very different projects
Drawing on what people and communities are actually saying, not just what is written in reports
Making trade-offs clearer, especially when time and budgets are constrained

Strategy alignment checks

Many organisations have a strategy that sets out commitments and outcomes. Over time, decisions can drift away from those intentions. Mindstake can be used to check alignment by:

Assessing whether investments and programmes match stated outcomes
Providing a structured view of strengths, gaps, and thin evidence across a portfolio
Keeping the view current as new evidence arrives, with every change explained

Working with some of Aotearoa's leading iwi and social good organisations

Guidance for your organisation

Mindstake works with three distinct types of organisation. Each faces different pressures, but they share a need for decisions that can withstand scrutiny.

Government agencies and councils

Government decisions often require fairness and consistency across applicants or suppliers, clear reasons that can stand up to review, strong governance and record keeping, and efficient use of limited staff time.

Mindstake supports these needs by making criteria and rubrics explicit, and by producing outputs that are easy to review. AI takes on the heavy reading, while every score stays linked to the passage it came from and people check the picture before it is reported.

Iwi and Māori organisations

Iwi and Māori organisations often operate across social, cultural, environmental, and commercial goals. Decision-making may also need to align with tikanga, kaupapa, and obligations to whānau and whenua.

Mindstake supports this by allowing the rubric to be designed around your kaupapa and priorities, measuring each investment against its own purpose rather than against the others, drawing on hui kōrero as well as papers, and supporting Māori Data Sovereignty through clear governance and security practices.

Learn about Te Anga Mana Raraunga

Trusts, foundations, and NGOs

Trusts and NGOs often work under tight budgets and high expectations. They may need to show funders, boards, and communities how decisions were made.

Mindstake supports this by helping build a clear rubric that makes expectations easy to communicate, supporting triage when applications or requests exceed available funding, producing a clear decision record and learning points for future rounds, turning the reports, surveys, and feedback you already collect into impact reporting funders can trust, and supporting consistent decisions even when staff change over time.

Same engine, different decisions

Every Mindstake configuration starts with the same question: what does your organisation value, and how well are your options delivering?

Iwi | Structured Review

Getting started

Most teams are up and running within a few weeks. We work alongside you to set up your first decision process - criteria, rubrics, and scoring - then hand it over so you can run it yourself.

An initial conversation to understand your decision context

We help you define criteria and build your rubric

Your team runs the process on your own Mindstake instance

Start a conversation View the full checklist →