Collaboration can yield great results: bringing together different groups, saving money, accomplishing goals that would be unattainable for one organization, and providing better services and products to the public. Unfortunately, collaboration, particularly across sectors, is often rife with challenges. Henry Kippin writes for The Guardian, “Dysfunctional relationships between the public, private and social sectors emerge, in part, because of a lack of empathy and understanding, which drives misalignment of incentives and misunderstanding of values.” Let’s look at three case studies to see what Kippin means.
The Massachusetts Department of Social
Services (DSS) and La Alianza Hispana had the opportunity to collaborate to
better deliver services to the Hispanic population in the area. Unfortunately,
the potential collaboration between the governmental agency and nonprofit began
several with issues. First, how would startup of the partnership be funded? DSS
planned to provide funds to run the program but not to startup the
collaboration. Additionally, power dynamics plagued the partnership with DSS
threatening to pull an existing contract with La Alianza Hispana if they did
not work on the new project together. This power play shows a lack of empathy
towards La Alianza as DSS was unconcerned about what pulling funding would mean
for the nonprofit. Unequal power dynamics as shown in this case are a key issue
for government-nonprofit collaboration as the government is often the provider
of funds for the nonprofit!
In a second example, we see the Seattle Art
Museum and First Things First coming together to get two referendums passed.
The referendums did not align; one was about low-income housing, and the other
to fund the art museum, but the two nonprofits knew that if they came together
and campaigned jointly they could bring about change that they could not bring
about independently. Unfortunately, this partnership faced challenges including
unequal involvement of the partners. According to a United Way publication
(2008) equal involvement is crucial in collaborations. Nonprofit collaborations
in particular may struggle to with equal involvement from both parties as both
are often taxed in resources (both staff time and financial resources).
A third example of a collaboration is between
a nonprofit, City Year (a service corps) and for-profit, Timberland Boots (a
company selling apparel and boots). The two collaborated in a number of ways
culminating in a joint line of City Year Gear.
Unfortunately, this collaboration also faced challenges with a lack of
planning and vision for the partnership.
In particular, this lack of planning exacerbated a common challenge
nonprofit and for-profit collaborations face, misunderstanding of values as both
are not focused on bringing in profit.
Overall, collaborations across all sectors
face common challenges of lack of communication and trust in the partnership (Sharma
and Missey 1998). Henry Kippin of The
Guardian notes, “Working together requires trust, communication, humility and a shared
understanding of purpose and outcomes.” If each partner brings these to the
table and continues to trust and communicate throughout the process,
collaborations can succeed. With increased communication and trust all of
the issues mentioned in the above cases with power dynamics, unequal
involvement of parties, and a lack of planning and vision can all be addressed
early on in the collaboration bringing about a successful venture.
