12 keys to a nonprofit collaboration process
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 states the basis for your need to collaborate and the types of organizations and programs you want to collaborate with. Without that, it will be difficult to have expectations of partners if your own house isn't in order. Next, build your leadership and collaboration skills: authentic communication, conflict resolution, critical thinking, running effective meetings, accountability and measures, 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
If you want to be a great collaborator, you need to be sure to continually work on 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 relating abilities that are needed for you. These improvements are different for each 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 for team members to identify their current most likely 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, solid relationships need to exist internally among your team before being able to use the same skills in more complex external collaborations. Leadership should encourage internal building the 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 is not possible. You have to be able to have each other's back. If your internal team can do this, it is entirely possible to close the gap with partners. It happens through meetings and the teams understanding each other as human beings. Start as if you are gaining a friend. Get to know the people and what they do. 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 are not the right partner - or it isn't the time.
5. Align A Mission-driven Plan to Potential Partners
When collaborating, the only way to present yourself well is to have a clearly defined and communicated mission-driven plan for action (many do not). Use a process to be 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, their needs, the services they need (beyond yours), and where they are located.
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 have to know your customers' list of needs before you can identify the partners who help to complete the package of providers they need.
6. Define Roles for Execution
Role definition of the board, leadership, and staff is vital to successful execution. There are often unclear boundaries between the roles, which leads to a lack of accountability for results, which steals away the opportunity for effective collaboration. After creating your plan, define the roles required. Who will be doing what in the plan for the next one to three years? Collaboration is a very general and overused word. It can mean different things to different people within different team dynamics and at different stages of the organization’s growth. Collaboration needs a 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 list you create. Find out what they do. What gaps do they need to fill? What programs are complementary to yours? Meet with aligned potential partners regularly, share notes, and find ways to collaborate. Test partnership projects and get your teams conditioned to partnering. As you meet with partners and foundations, they will give you more ideas for partners that might be outside your norm - ask them who 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
Start with organizational assessment and self-awareness to get a quick scan of the opportunities for solving high-impact problems. Ensure that team members can see for themselves the current status of their individual collaboration skills (or lack thereof) and understand the customer needs to be solved from the customers’ perspectives. Then, instill some basic training about what collaboration is and is not and what skills are required. Finally, collaboration is only genuinely achieved by working on a project together with evaluation along the way about what is going well and not well so the team can self-prescribe how to improve 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 to bringing collaboration to the table. 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 takes up to 18 months to implement with measurable results. The primary reason is because of the time it takes to align people, gain their trust, mobilize, and gain momentum to implement the change together in the same direction.
11. Build Coalitions for Open Dialog
Encourage open dialog 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 the courage to just start doing it. A great book to share with potential collaborators is Toward Greater Impact. This book is the basis 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, they need a vision and direction to collaborate 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-involved or overly-involved boards usually exist when there is no clear plan or staff aligned to a funded plan to take the operational responsibilities away from the board so they can serve in the governance, oversight, and fundraising roles that they should be serving. Working boards can work during transitional times of leadership. However, an ongoing working board only exists when their responsibility to properly strategically lead and fund the organization 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 and then impacts the ability to get to an intentional plan, structure, and assignment of roles where everyone sees their value and gains energy to achieve the mission and thrive (versus just survive) without the scarcity mindset.