Improving Services: Promoting Coordination, Cooperative Agreements, and Collaborative Agreements Among Agencies
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WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR ORGANIZATIONS TO WORK TOGETHER?
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WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT WAYS THAT ORGANIZATIONS CAN WORK TOGETHER?
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HOW DO WE CHOOSE AMONG RELATIONSHIPS?
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WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES THAT ORGANIZATIONS CONFRONT WHEN THEY ARE WORKING TOGETHER?
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HOW DO GROUPS BEGIN TO BUILD ORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS?
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR ORGANIZATIONS TO WORK TOGETHER?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be strong enough to pick up a car? You probably think that job is best left to superheroes. Well, let's think again. What if you had 20 or 30 people all picking up the car together? Isn't that a little more in the realm of possibility? Try it out sometime for fun and see what happens. You may be surprised to find out that you and your friends can do it.
And while you're thinking about what is possible with a group of 20 or 30 people, let's take it a step further - what if you multiplied that number by two or three? In other words, what if you had several groups working together to solve difficult problems? They might be able to lift a small truck!
Let's face it - solving problems in communities can seem daunting at times. Problems with education, jobs, housing, the environment, and crime are complex and interwoven. How does just one individual or one group make a dent in solving these broad problems?
There is real strength in numbers. When you have many groups with different views, resources, and skills applying their intelligence and strength to solve a problem together, the results can be like the work of superheroes.
This section is about organizations working together to accomplish goals. By networking, coordinating, cooperating, and collaborating, organizations working together can accomplish goals they couldn't reach working in isolation.
Groups of people can work together to accomplish amazing tasks. They can figure out ways to garner the necessary skills, funds, and time to solve community problems and improve human services. What you need are people who are well-organized, cooperative, and determined.
And as we work together, we are not only accomplishing our goals, such as making health care more accessible or creating more jobs for youth; we are also learning how to bring the local decision-making process into the hands of community members. We are getting better at making democracy work. And that's no small potatoes.
What could your organization accomplish by working together with others?
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT WAYS THAT ORGANIZATIONS CAN WORK TOGETHER?
There is a whole range of working relationships that organizations can have with one another. Some organizations will establish relationships just to share information. Others will pool resources in order to accomplish common goals, and others might do anything in between.
So first, let's describe some of the possibilities. Then we'll discuss how you might choose among them.
NETWORKING
Organizations have a networking relationship when they exchange information in order to help each organization do a better job. For example, if a school and a community counseling center share information about their counseling services for youth, that is a form of networking. Or, if a number of grassroots community organizations in a small town share their yearly calendars of public events, that will help those organizations foresee and forestall any scheduling conflicts. Networking requires the least amount of commitment and time from organizations and can in itself have significant positive results.
Networking can also be a good starting point for people to work together in other ways. In one small town, a group of grant writers from different non-profits began meeting on a monthly basis to network with each other. The members of the group found the meetings informative and supportive. After meeting for more than a year, the group began to work on projects together that benefited each organization and the whole town.
Organizations can network in a number of ways. They can meet together for lunch, share newsletters, participate in e-mail networks, or meet at seminars and conferences.
COORDINATION
Organizations have a coordinating relationship when they modify their activities so that together, they provide better services to their constituents. If a school and community counseling center modify their services so there are more counselors available to youth during the hours services are needed, that is coordination. Another example of coordination is if organizations not only shared their calendars of major public events, but also changed the dates of some events, so there would not be major conflicts. In both cases, coordination helps fill in the gaps and also helps prevent service duplication.
Coordination is important because it gives people a better chance to get the services they need. It can be highly exasperating for someone to deal with institutions that don't coordinate their efforts. For example, if a four-year college does not coordinate its class sequences to facilitate an easy transition for incoming students completing a two-year community college program, then those students may have to wait a term or even a year to begin their new required classes. Or if a person who qualifies for health care benefits has to go through a screening process at several different health centers before she can access her benefits, that is an unnecessary barrier.
A coordinating relationship requires more organizational involvement, time, and trust than a networking relationship. However, the results can significantly improve people's lives.
COOPERATION
When organizations cooperate, they not only share information and make adjustments in their services - they share resources to help each other do a better job. In a cooperative relationship, organizations may share staff, volunteers, expertise, space, funds, and other resources. For example, if the school and the community counseling center share physical space for evening services in order to better meet the needs of neighborhood youth, they are in a cooperative relationship. Another example would be if community organizations in a town shared staff time to put out a yearly calendar of major events for the whole community.
Cooperating requires more trust and a greater investment in time than either networking or coordination. In order to enter into a cooperative relationship, organizations also have to let go of some turf issues. Organizations have to be willing to share the ownership and the responsibility, to risk some hassles, and to reap the rewards of their efforts together.
COLLABORATION
In a collaborative relationship, organizations help each other expand or enhance their capacities to do their jobs. For example, a school and community counseling center may jointly apply for a grant to train the staff of both organizations. In another example, several grassroots organizations in a town may co-sponsor a large public event, in an effort to expand the memberships of all the organizations involved.
As Arthur Himmelman says, "Collaboration is a relationship in which each organization wants to help its partners become the best that they can be." In collaborative relationships, people begin to see each other as partners rather than competitors. This shift in view is profound in a society that has had so much emphasis on individualism.
Himmelman goes on to say that when organizations collaborate they have to, "share risks, responsibilities, and rewards." In sharing risks, each organization is, to some extent, throwing its lot in with another organization. For example, when the school and community counseling center jointly apply for a training, they are both risking their time and credibility in an effort to raise money to improve the capacity of each organization.
In a collaborative relationship, each organization must also carry its share of the responsibilities. Just like in the "Little Red Hen," if one group "plants the wheat, harvests it, takes it to the mill, and bakes it," then that one group will also "eat the bread" by itself. On the other hand, if everyone does the work all the way through, "everyone can eat the bread together."
Additionally, all the organizations can and should share the credit and recognition. For example, if a news reporter comes to the Winter Hill Community Corporation to do a story on the highly successful affordable housing program it is sponsoring, then Winter Hill's representative should tell the reporter all about the three other organizations collaborating in the effort and give them appropriate credit.
Collaboration is a much bigger enterprise than networking, coordinating, and cooperating; but the potential for change can also be greater. It implies a much higher level of trust, risk taking, sharing of turf, and commitment. Collaboration can give people hope, because it demonstrates that people from different groups can overcome their mistrust and other obstacles to accomplish larger goals together.
MULTISECTOR COLLABORATION
Multisector collaboration is similar to the collaborations described above, but it has an even greater potential for change as well as greater challenges. In multisector collaboration, private, public, and nonprofit organizations from different parts of the community and sometimes ordinary citizens, form a partnership to solve systemic problems in a community, such as a failing educational or health care system, a poor business climate, or an unskilled workforce.
Complex and intertwined problems like these require cooperation throughout a community in order to make positive changes. No one organization or even one sector can make significant movement without the help and cooperation of the other sectors. Often multisector collaboration occurs when organizations or sectors have tried to solve problems by themselves, and have failed.
An example of multisector collaboration is when community organizations join forces with government, schools, and businesses to solve a number of connected problems, such as a lack of jobs for youth, youth crime, a climbing high school drop-out rate, and a lack of a skilled labor force. The different groups will come together to define the problem and then plan and implement a strategy to prepare young people to become skilled workers. In this case, businesses' needs for a skilled workforce are similar to and linked with the needs of community activists, and with the goals of educational institutions.
Multisector collaboration is markedly more complex and challenging than the other organizational relationships. It requires that all the parties involved put aside the narrow interests of their own organizations or sectors and give priority to the broader common good of the larger community. Everyone involved must come to the recognition that only when the larger community solves its key problems will each organization have a better chance at getting its needs met.
Multisector collaboration is a long-term enterprise in which the rewards are great, but so is the investment of time and resources. It requires a high level of trust, a compelling need, and the will to make a change. Often, developing trust and a commitment to the broader common good takes a period of months, or even a year or two, depending on the scope of the project and the initial level of trust.
Multisector collaboration has the greatest potential for communities to become empowered and more democratic. In multisector collaboration, community members can become equal players with business and government in making decisions that affect community members and their human service needs.
Now that you know what the different organizational relationships are, how do you decide which is the best for your community, group, or organization?
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