Collective Challenges Can Transform Into Collective Impact
In my very first blog for this site I spoke of a smaller nonprofit’s superhero power of collaboration. This past week, I had the incredible opportunity to facilitate a meeting with a group agencies of all sizes who came together under the auspices of capacity building.
In a traditional first session, we took time getting to know one another, the services available within each organization, and each organization’s strengths and challenges. There were numerous, amazing take aways. Here are three key highlights and what it could mean for future collective impact.
Though most had been in existence for at least a decade, many for multiple decades to more than a century, very few of these organizations were aware of each others’ services or ever found themselves in meetings with each other.
Despite the invitation going out to a city council district known to be lacking in resources, there were approximately 10 organizations in the room with others having to regret this first meeting. These organizations offer an incredible array of services, including multiple cultural organizations in a zone most people would assume was a cultural desert.
These organizations’ challenges were very similar, largely focused on aspects of infrastructure: adequate space, adequate funding, and the resources necessary to manage overwhelming demands related to contracting with the city. As for this latter challenge, these organizations particularly lamented how much time they spent fighting for systemic change with the City’s contracting processes and expectations, versus creatively and strategically planning for the future .
In this meeting, leads relative to space were shared. More will undoutedly surface as more organizations join this collaborative. Perhaps this will mean a new revenue stream for some organizations or a strategic bartering system will be arranged instead. A collective approach to social services in a targeted district could also present new funding opportunities. More and more, particularly amongst private foundations, I have noticed interest in funding a collaborative enterprise in an effort to see greater return on investment. Speaking of which, collectively, this group could harness program evaluation monies, moving them from tracking utilization to measuring real, collective, community impact. Similarly, collectively, they would have greater political power that might finally create the change nonprofits have been begging for around city contracting and background clearance backlogs.