We like to think of collaboration as functioning on a continuum from cooperation to collaboration to partnership to merger where the terms are defined as follows:
Cooperation: neither organization shares resources but they do refer their clients to other organizations who are capable of fulfilling needs which the referring organization cannot accomplish. Examples would be a HeadStart program referring clients to the Food Bank, or the Food Bank referring clients to a parenting class at the local community center.
Collaboration: participating organizations share some level of resources with each other. They have “skin in the game”. For example, one organization uses a van during the day and collaborating organization uses the same van on weekends. Collaboration generally requires A Memorandum of Understanding to ensure common understanding of expectations.
Partnership: the organizations maintain a separate identity but share their resources for one or more programs. An agency that provides services 9 to 5 Monday through Friday shares are space with a program that works evenings and weekends. The relationship is now complex enough that a contractual relationship with defined costs, liabilities, policies and procedures is required.
Merger: generally two organizations which have very similar missions form a new organization which fills both missions while realizing such advantages as economies of scale, elimination of duplication of back office functions and shared volunteer and board capacity.
O: Observation: You might distinguish the difficulty/costs of different kinds of collaboration between nonprofits. Sharing ideas and best practices in discussion forums or written documents is easy, but coordinating shared service delivery is often difficult and time consuming.
This point is very well taken. With very rare exceptions people, groups or organizations only change when the status quo is more painful than the process/struggle that leads to a new reality. Said another way, the benefit of the new relationship must outweigh the struggle to establish the relationship.
The methodology and technology that we have illustrated in this abbreviated process has been shown in for-profit businesses and nonprofit organizations to sufficiently lower the barrier to collaboration that organizations are more inclined to enter serious dialogue. Such conversations have led to collaborations, partnerships and when warranted even mergers
Q: How can we get to know one another to work more collaboratively?
Our vision as an organization is to enable deeper alignment within organizations and to foster meaningful collaboration and partnership between and among nonprofits. Our original intention fostering this conversation was to provoke thought, provide some insightful data, gain insights and wisdom from the community and to assess the level of interest in “collaboration”. Thanks to your gracious participation, it appears we received even more than we bargained for.
Therefore, in light of what we perceive to be some genuine interest in further conversation, we would be delighted to conduct a webinar with all participants to walk through the data. You will be able to see the analytics at a deeper level when the software is live as opposed to in PDF form. If that conversation results in ongoing communication by two or more organizations that would simply be a great bonus.