Collaboration: A Little Help From Your Friends

"I get by with a little help from my friends." – John Lennon and Paul McCartney

In 1624, John Donne informed us that "no man is an island" - a sentiment that is still relevant more than 400 years later. Collaboration or working with others to achieve a goal is essential to functioning in the nonprofit world. Working with limited resources on massive problems, the nonprofit sector must collaborate with clients, donors, other providers, governments, volunteers, etc., if they are to effect any meaningful changes. The benefits of collaborating are that doing it well can provide many more benefits than challenges. It’s a true case of the sum being greater than its parts. Below are six benefits of thoughtful, well-executed collaboration:

1. Collaboration prevents the same mistakes from continually happening.

Nonprofit operations are intrinsically about experimenting to find solutions to the problems that government and the private sector cannot resolve. With any experiment, failures occur as frequently (and sometimes more) than successes. Failure is part of the process.

If you are operating in a vacuum without others to review processes and procedures, it is hard to identify and navigate your own mistakes. When you are working with others, they can spot items that you are too close to see. The different perspective can prevent you from repeating the same mistakes without realizing that they are mistakes holding you back.

Domestic violence shelters often share best practices with shelters in other communities in an effort to keep their clients and their families safe. A domestic violence victim is most vulnerable in the time immediately after leaving their abuser, so shelters, especially in small rural areas, often have networks of shelters in other areas that can shelter victims far enough away from their immediate area. This simple collaboration has saved lives.

2. Collaboration uncovers and shares best practices.

Best practices occur when we see repeatedly and over time what has worked well and the impact that it has on the change that we are trying to create. In order to identify something as a best practice, we need those actions to be repeated by others and for those others to share what was successful.

Almost every nonprofit has created a process or a practice that works well and could likely be replicated as a best practice. It is in sharing that process with others and getting feedback that we best understand how it can be repeated and tweaked if needed for other organizations.

Sharing also produces collective best practices including areas that may correct underperforming or challenging aspects of our own nonprofits.

Nonprofit state networks often provide free or low cost educational trainings in an effort to educate the nonprofits in their area in best practices, especially in technology or finance, of which direct internal knowledge may be limited.

3. Collaboration saves both time and money.

When your organization has knowledge of both the mistakes that others have made, it allows you to move forward without repeating those same mistakes. As a result, your organization is spared the additional time and expense it would take to discover them yourself.

Your organization can operate more efficiently and effectively, which appeals to funders. It also affords you time to expand your work with more resources.

4. Collaboration establishes a sense of community.

Collaboration fulfills our natural desires to belong and be a part of a team or a community. When you are sharing information with others, your organization becomes larger than just your mission or your efforts. You become part of a community of others, who possess similar values, interests, and goals.

Increased groups of people increase the amount and scope of opportunities available to them. These might include: exposure to donors and volunteers; a broader network of stakeholders; grant funding opportunities; etc. Because collaboration is at its core outreach, it grows your world in ways that you cannot imagine. It is the most organic form of awareness.

When people are working together in support of a common mission, then they feel as though they belong. That sense of belonging is what creates and sustains communities.

5. Collaboration creates advocacy partners and allies.

Although you may be improving society in some way through the efforts of your nonprofit, there will likely always be opposition. That opposition may be a corporation whose values are not aligned with your mission or it may be a country whose laws or lack thereof violate your organization's treatment of others. In either case, against opposition, your organization is always stronger when it is acting in conjunction with others and not as a lone wolf.

Collaboration offers opportunities to build those advocacy partners and allies from within the nonprofit sector and outside of it. These additional partners increase your visibility; advocate for your mission in ways that you cannot from inside it; and validate your position. Taking a stand creates proponents, who can speak about the impact of your organization and become ambassadors for securing funding and additional human capital.

National nonprofits often collaborate to create laws that benefit the clients and mission they are serving. For example, children who ran away from home, often because of abuse, were charged with the crime of running away. Advocacy among national youth development and runaway prevention nonprofits was able to collaborate to change the laws and create programming for youth that would not criminalize them but rather get them help.

6. Collaboration builds trust.

Like the nonprofit sector, collaboration cannot exist without trust. You would not work with someone without trusting them, and they most likely would not work with your organization without trusting it. Creating the collaborative partnership then signals a level of trust outside of that partnership as well. If your organization aligns with a trusted group, then by default others will see your organization as trustworthy because of that partnership.

Collaborations promote trust exponentially beyond the simple partnership between the two parties. We see this most commonly through the engagement of spokespeople. Marlo Thomas creates trust for St. Jude, initially because of her father's work in founding the organization and now through her own decades-long partnership. Her work with them has connected the organization to countless other celebrities. Their own work and commitment to providing cancer treatment to children and support to their families during that treatment at no cost has elevated the stars that advocate on their behalf.

Working in the nonprofit sector can feel especially lonely with challenges in serving clients, finding resources to continue the mission, and measuring the impact of your work. The work is hard and takes a significant toll on mental health – especially these days with increased demands for services and shrinking budgets and funding sources. Collaboration combats that loneliness by creating a team and support network of people and organizations changing the world for the better in a more effective and efficient manner and caring for one another as they do so.


Fullanthropy Perspective:

Sharing a sector, a funder, or even a mission statement's spirit is not the same as building the kind of collaborative partnership that prevents mistakes, uncovers what works, and creates allies willing to advocate on your behalf.

The CLAIM Your Legacy™ framework addresses how effective your organization is at building collaborations and ultimately a Community, because, however well-resourced or well-intentioned, no organization solves a societal problem alone.

Great collaborations spread best practices instead of letting them die quietly in one office, and prevent your organization from feeling like it is alone in doing challenging work.

Is your organization coexisting with its partners, or truly collaborating with them? Chart Your Impact™ and find out.