12 Keys to Nonprofit Collaboration
To collaborate with other nonprofits, our strategic alignment collaboration model outlines the key elements for leadership to integrate internal purpose with external partners. To collaborate with others effectively, you will need a clear internal plan for your organization that outlines the basis for your need to collaborate and the types of organizations and programs with which you wish to collaborate. Without that, it will be difficult to have expectations of partners if your own house isn't in order. Next, develop your leadership and collaboration skills, including authentic communication, conflict resolution, critical thinking, running effective meetings, accountability and measurement, and project management. Finally, identify partners and complete the steps of a structured partner plan to build collaborative programming and projects.
1.Build Your Individual Collaboration Skills
To be a great collaborator, it is essential to continually work on developing self-awareness and leadership skills. Based on your strengths and talents in the three parts of the mind (affective, conative, and cognitive), along with your needs for improvement, work on building the relating abilities that are needed for you. These improvements vary from person to person. The ability to build relationships is the basis for collaboration.
2. Build Conflict Resolution Skills
Most collaborations fail because team members have not built “Collaborating” conflict resolution skills. We use the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument to help team members identify their most likely current mode of resolving conflict. The five modes are Competing, Compromising, Accommodating, Avoiding, and Collaborating. Measure the team’s current skills and use this as a basis for building specific collaborating skill sets for each team member based on their results.
3. Build Team Collaboration Skills
Collaboration requires individual and team-based skills. Since collaboration requires solid relationships, these relationships must exist internally among your team before you can apply the same skills in more complex external collaborations. Leadership should encourage internal building of skills by developing and aligning the team with a strategic plan that will be commonly communicated to potential partners during the partner plan process. Doing so will naturally require building collaboration skills. Use tools demonstrated in the Team Handbook to put practice and process at the forefront of your collaborations.
4. Lead Authentic Relationship-building
If team members or partners prove to be untrustworthy or self-serving, collaboration becomes impossible. You have to be able to have each other's backs. If your internal team can do this, it is entirely possible to close the gap with partners. It occurs through meetings and the team’s understanding of one another as human beings. Start as if you are gaining a friend. Get to know the people and learn about their work. Invest in the relationship. From there, the right collaborative opportunity will come at the right time. You can't force partnership - it starts with authentic relationship-building. In the process, leadership cannot tolerate childish behaviors and petty comparisons. Leadership must represent the relationship-building process. If potential partners aren't ready to trust and can't open up to the process, they may not be the right partner - or it may not be the right time.
5. Align A Mission-driven Plan to Potential Partners
When collaborating, the best way to present yourself is to have a clearly defined and communicated mission-driven plan of action (many do not). Establish a process as the foundation of the partnership. You will not be successful without process. Remember, 80% of the time, it is the process/systems and not the people.
Define your target segments, including their needs, the services they require (beyond your own), and their geographical locations.
You must assess opportunities through the lens of your vision, mission, purpose, values, strategic plan, and action plan.
Then, identify the other partners that also serve your customers and meet their needs (even if they are different than yours). Any potential partner may directly or indirectly compete for your customers' time. You must know your customers' list of needs before you can identify the partners who help complete the package of providers they need.
6. Define Roles for Execution
The role definition of the board, leadership, and staff is vital to the successful execution. There are often unclear boundaries between the roles, which leads to a lack of accountability for results, and this in turn steals away the opportunity for effective collaboration. After creating your plan, define the roles required. Who will be responsible for what in the plan over the next one to three years? Collaboration is a broad and often overused term. It can mean different things to different people within different team dynamics and at different stages of the organization’s growth. Collaboration requires a clear why, what, and how to rally people around. What is the plan, who is responsible for its various elements, and what is the implementation plan and timeline for execution? Without that, you have no reason or structure by which to collaborate.
7. Seek - Don’t Wait for Collaborating Partners
Go out and meet with the leaders of the potential partners on your list. Find out what they do. What gaps do they need to fill? What programs are complementary to yours? Meet regularly with aligned potential partners, share notes, and explore ways to collaborate. Test partnership projects and condition your teams to work together effectively. As you meet with partners and foundations, they will likely provide you with more ideas for potential partners who might be outside your usual norm - ask them who they think you should be partnering with. Get yourself out there and meet with other organizations, tour their facilities, and ask a standard list of questions so you can learn and compare notes across the board. If you wait for magical partners to appear on your doorstep, you are missing out on the best ways to scale and serve others now.
8. Learn Some, Do Now
Begin with an organizational assessment and self-awareness to gain a quick understanding of the opportunities for addressing high-impact problems. Ensure that team members can see for themselves the current status of their individual collaboration skills (or lack thereof) and understand how to solve customer needs from the customers’ perspectives. Then, provide some basic training on what collaboration is and is not, as well as the required skills. Finally, genuine collaboration is only achieved by working on a project together, with regular evaluation along the way to identify what is going well and not so well. This allows the team to self-prescribe improvements through the actual experience of collaborating. Don’t wait too long to start with a project and work through the disciplines required to collaborate well. Theory only goes so far.
9. Use “We” Language
"We" is the most important word to use in most sentences. "Please share what you do." "We are trying to solve this problem/develop this program." "What if we... did this together....?" What ideas do you have?" "Is there a way we can work together on (topic)." "Could we make this impact?" Everything should be unity-driven and problem-solving together on bigger issues that you can't address alone. It is appropriate to use “I” when you are speaking for yourself about your perceptions and taking ownership of your actions without implicating others. Demonstrating ownership of your ideas can be expressed with vulnerability and courage, and you are willing to put yourself out there so others will be inspired to do the same. Creating comfort in expressing ideas and views is essential for fostering collaboration. Then, shift to “we” when others show up and solutions start to whirl.
10. Patience and Time
Collaborations don’t start instantly. For change initiatives to take hold and be implemented, it typically takes up to 18 months to achieve measurable results. The primary reason is that it takes time to align people, gain their trust, mobilize them, and build momentum to implement the change together in the same direction.
11. Build Coalitions for Open Dialog
Encourage open dialogue with like-minded leaders and their organizations. Take the first step and organize discussions that start with questions about issues you can solve together. It takes time and relationship building. Collaboration, communication, leadership, and integrative thinking are skill sets that you must intentionally develop. It also takes courage to start doing it. A great book to share with potential collaborators is Toward Greater Impact. This book serves as the foundation of our work, and we share it with many.
12. Keep Board of Directors Operating at High Levels
For a board to think more collaboratively, it needs a clear vision and direction to work together around. This direction and plan should be initially developed by the staff (with initial board input) and presented to the board for feedback, buy-in, and support. We find that highly or overly involved boards usually exist when there is no clear plan or staff aligned with a funded plan to take operational responsibilities away from the board, allowing them to serve in their intended governance, oversight, and fundraising roles. Working boards can be effective during transitional periods of leadership. However, an ongoing working board only exists when their responsibility to lead and fund the organization properly strategically is replaced with tactical thinking that forces them to be and undermine the staff and shut down the collaborations they should be forming. While this is usually not intentional, it happens and creates confusion about roles, which in turn impacts the ability to establish an intentional plan, structure, and assignment of roles where everyone sees their value and gains the energy to achieve the mission and thrive (versus survive) without the scarcity mindset.