Mobilizing your Community into Collaborative Action

Liz Weaver Vice President, Tamarack – An Institute for

Community Engagement liz@tamarackcommunity.ca

Trust

Turf

Loose Tight

Compete Co-exist Communicate Cooperate Coordinate Collaborate Integrate

Competition for clients, resources, partners, public attention.

No systematic connection between agencies.

Inter-agency information sharing (e.g. networking).

As needed, often informal, interaction, on discrete activities or projects.

Organizations systematically adjust and align work with each other for greater outcomes.

Longer term interaction based on shared mission, goals; shared decision-makers and resources.

Fully integrated programs, planning, funding.

The Collaboration Continuum

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Key Practices for Effective Collaboration

Assessing the Environment

Creating Clarity

Building Trust

Sharing Power and Influence

Reflection

Assessing the Local Environment

Questions to consider:

• Who is doing what? • Who is leading? • What collaborative efforts

are already underway? • Who is missing?• What resources are

available? • What do you want to do? • What will it take?

Community Context Factors

• Prior history of collaboration – success and failure

• Connectedness between leadership• Understanding and urgency of issue • Evidence to inform direction• Broad Community Engagement

Mapping Community Leadership

• Your Capacity • Community Capacity • Your Convening Capacity • Identifying Appropriate Partners • Bringing individuals with lived experience into

the conversation• Assessing Risks and Rewards

Community Partners

Business• Expertise, credibility and

voice, connections, funding and other resources, leadership

Nonprofit Organizations• Expertise, experience on

the ground, service delivery, ability to ramp up change efforts

Government• Expertise, connections to

elected officials, funding and other resources, policy change, leadership

Citizens with Lived Experience • Expertise about the issues,

practical and relevant solution, leadership, connections to other citizens

Look to Other Communities

5 Lessons about Collaboration

• A big clear issue that only a collaborative can tackle

• Leadership that drives the process • Staffing for Follow through • Defining the role of the collaborative and what

it will accomplish • Balancing process and progress

– Five Lessons on Collaboration, Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction and Jobs Prosperity Collaborative

Lessons Learned in Canada

1. Get the bird’s eye and worm’s eye views

2. Navigate the local context

3. Learn by doing 4. Make both vertical and

horizontal links 5. Be persistent and have

appropriate expectationshttp://tamarackcommunity.ca/g3s61_VC_2011g.html

Creating Clarity

The Collaborative Premise

If you bring the appropriate people together in constructive ways with good information, they will create authentic visions and strategies for addressing the shared concerns of the organizations and the community.

» David Chrislip, The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook

» http://tamarackcommunity.ca/g3s5l.html

Collaborative Premise - Shared

Agreements

• Shared concern needs to be addressed • Identify a need to work together • Determine how to work together • Shared understanding of the information • Shared definition of the problem • Agreement on solutions • Agreement on action steps

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From Isolated Impact to Collective Impact

Isolated Impact • Funders select individual grantees

• Organizations work separately

• Evaluation attempts to isolate a particular organization’s impact

• Large scale change is assumed to depend on scaling organizations

• Corporate and government sectors are often disconnected from foundations and non-profits.

Collective Impact • Funders understand that social

problems – and their solutions – arise from multiple interacting factors

• Cross-sector alignment with government, nonprofit, philanthropic and corporate sectors as partners

• Organizations actively coordinating their actions and sharing lessons learned

• All working toward the same goal and measuring the same things

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Preconditions for Collective Impact

• Influential Champion(s)

• Urgency of issue

• Adequate Resources

Collective Impact

• Common agenda • Shared measurement

systems • Mutually reinforcing

activities • Continuous communication • Backbone support

organization

– John Kania and Mark Kramer, Winter 2011

Using a comprehensive, multi-sectorapproach communities can …

1. Raise the profile of poverty.

2. Build a constituency for change.

3. Encourage collaborative ways of working.

4. Begin to shift systems underlying poverty.

5. Generate changes for a large number of people living in poverty.

Collaboration Success Factors

• Influential and credible convener(s)

• Cross-sector, connected leadership table

• Challenging community aspiration

• Clearly articulated purpose and approach

• High degree of resident mobilization

• Research which informs the work

Building Relationships

What is Trust?

Power in Relationship

Power penetrates all relationships and work. 1. Openly claim the power we bring; 2. Be aware of our own corruptibility; 3. Refuse to deny our power; and 4. Resolve any conflicts that grow from the use

of power. If we don’t embrace all actions, we fall into the dark side of power.

Forms of Power

• Charisma• Connections• Expertise• Fame & Visibility• Integrity & Credibility• Life Experience• Persuasion• Resources

Roadblocks & Resistance

• Power Dynamics • Partner Motivation • Process-Product Tension • Too Big to Fail • Death by 1000 knives • Reading the Roadmap – bridges and potholes • Keeping up with the Changes

So What?

Context