Win-Win-Win Partnerships: Sustainability for Social

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Win-Win-Win Partnerships Sustainability for
Social TransformationApril 21, 2006

• Daniella Levine, JD, MSW
• Founder and Executive Director
• Human Services Coalition
• www.hscdade.org
• www.imaginemiami.org
• www.prosperitycampaign.org

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Presentation Components

• Why I Care
• Prosperity Campaign Imagine Miami Incubator
  for Change
• Collaboration 101
• Exercise Evaluate Your Partnership
• Appreciative Exercise
• Building Strong Partnerships
• University-Community Partnerships
• Strategies for Social Change
• Transactions ? Transformation

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Why I Care

• Our democracy hangs in the balance
• Our academic institutions play critical roles
• Allow us to keep Americas promise of opportunity
  for all, building bridges for diverse communities
  and individuals
• Incubator for economic and social vitality
• Shape and reflect Americas and communitys
  vision, values and strategies
• Bring added value to communities increasingly
  squeezed for resources to address social need

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Prosperity Campaign

• Links low wage workers and families to economic
  benefits to build economic sustainability
• Earned Income Tax Credit
• Food Stamps
• Medicaid and childrens health insurance
• Affordable housing
• Banking, credit repair, financial education
• Education and workforce training

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Human Services Coalition

• Born 10 years ago
• Promote human worth and dignity
• Promote effective, efficient, human health and
  human service
• Focused on economic and social justice
• Building community prosperity
• Building capacity of individuals, organizations
  and community to build a just society
• Creating pipeline for innovation

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Imagine Miami

• Civic change initiative to Build a Community and
  Economy that Work for All
• Move Miami from among poorest (1 in 2000 census)
  to 1 in community prosperity
• Addresses economic prosperity, civic
  health/unity, environmental sustainability,
  opportunity
• Sectoral and community-wide engagement
• Builds on assets and hope
• Creates pipeline for new kind of leadership

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Chaordic Structures

• Non-hierarchical
• Multiple levels of ownership and creativity
• Knowledge flows from and to all levels
• Consistency of values, vision and brand
• Seeks deep personal, cultural, systemic, and
  structural change

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Collaboration 101
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Definition of Collaboration 1

• Unnatural Act Among Consulting Adults
• Mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship
  entered into by two or more organizations/groups/i
  ndividuals to achieve common goals
• Either/or
• Both/and?

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Trends in Collaboration

• No longer the exception
• Multi-discipline, multi-sector
• Multi-sized organizations
• New leadership roles
• Funders playing different roles

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Partnerships/CollaborationA Word By Any Other
Name

• Alliance
• Coalition
• Commission
• Team
• Consolidation
• Consortium
• Cooperation

• Joint effort
• Joint powers
• League
• Merger
• Network
• Task force
• Confederation

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The Intensity of Collaboration

• Collaboration
• more durable and pervasive relationships
• new structure with commitment to common goals
• all partners contribute resources and share
  rewards leadership

• Cooperation
• shorter-term, informal relationships
• shared information only
• separate goals, resources and structures

• Coordination
• longer-term effort around a project or task
• some planning and division of roles
• some shared resources, rewards and risk

Lower Intensity
Higher Intensity
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Exercise

• Identify partnerships that you are or have been
  involved in and place them using our intensity
  continuum.

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Definition of Collaboration 2

• Collaboration is a mutually beneficial and
  well-defined relationship entered into by two or
  more organizations to achieve common goals.

• The relationship includes a commitment to
• shared goals
• a jointly developed structure and shared
  responsibility
• mutual authority and accountability for success
• sharing of resources, risk, and reward

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Why we collaborate

• Mandates from funder or employer)
• Community impact increase scale and reach more
  accessible, effective services build community
  capacity
• Capacity cant do it alone (knowledge,
  resources, skill)
• Mutual gains clear and tangible wins for all,
  including efficiency, learning and fun!
• Self-interest and need survival, shrinking
  resources
• To cope with change

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Change--the only constant

• Diverse, complex social fabric
• Exponential growth of knowledge
• Increased reliance on grants and donations
• Measuring performance and impact
• Rise in strategic alliances
• Adaptation to technology-based world
• Boundaries dissolving reintegration
• Blended Values

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Collaboration Challenges

• Time-consuming, over long periods
• Process easily derailed by issues of
  competition, trust, mutuality
• Complex layers of decision-making
• Difficulties dividing benefits and
  responsibilities
• Lack of skill, training and capacity to
  support collaboration

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The Focus of Collaboration
Development/ Advocacy
Administration
Service Delivery
High

• Centralized purchasing, benefits programs
• Shared staff (bookkeeping, proposal writer)
• Co-location
• Asset management
• Board/staff development

• New funding streams
• Packaged funding requests
• Advocacy on policy issues, e.g., welfare reform,
  community violence, privatization
• Media/marketing campaigns
• Community forums

• Region-wide service delivery system
• Niche specialties shared through contracts
• New program development
• Coordinated I R
• Staff exchanges

Degree of Involvement
Low
High
Difficulty, Time, Impact
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Stages of a Collaborative Relationship

• 1. Create a vision strategic framework
• Organize the effort
• Implement the plan
• 4. Ensure continuity

• concept paper, strategic or business plan
• operating agreement or charter
• results
• sustainability

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Collaborative Structures

• Equal partners
• Honor different roles and strengths
• Fiscal agent or sponsor
• Convener
• Meeting facilitator
• Work groups or task forces
• Supporting network of partners

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Elements of Collaboration Charter

• Mission/Purpose
• Values/Assumptions
• Vision
• Timeline, Milestones
• Membership
• Roles, responsibilities

• Policies
• Competition Guidelines
• Conflict of Interest
• Financial relationships
• Norms
• Participation
• Decision-making
• Communication
• Conflict
• Meetings

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Keys to Success

• Wilder Research Center reviewed and summarized
  existing research (2001)
• Examined 281 studies on collaboration
• Identified 6 key areas (20 factors) that
  influence the success of collaborations

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Success Factors
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20 FactorsInfluencing Successful Collaborations
The Environment

• 1. History of collaboration or cooperation
• 2. Collaborative group seen as a leader in the
  community
• 3. Political/social climate favorable

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• Purpose
• 4. Concrete, attainable goals and objectives
• 5. Shared vision
• 6. Unique purpose

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• Membership
• Mutual respect, understanding, and trust
• Appropriate representation
• Members see collaboration as in their
  self-interest
• 10. Ability to compromise

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• Process/Structure
• 11. Members share a stake in both process and
  outcomes
• 12. Multiple layers of decision making
• 13. Flexibility
• 14. Clear roles and policy guidelines
• 15. Adaptability
• 16. Appropriate pace of development

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• Communication
• 17. Open and frequent communication
• 18. Established informal and formal
  communication links
• Resources
• 19. Sufficient funds
• 20. Skilled convener

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Assessment Tool Uses

• Prior to forming a collaboration, use the tool to
  assess the readiness of your organization to
  participate in a collaboration
• Once in a collaboration, use the tool to decide
  how you are doing as a group
• Use the tool to begin discussion on tough issues

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Exercise Evaluate Your Partnership

• Use the tool to think through your partnership
  success factors. What is likely to work and what
  may cause some problems?

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Partnership Red Lights

• A joint proposal without a common mission or
  strategy divide the funding
• Proposals that focus on process and not outcomes
• Lack of board support for the collaboration
• No plans or resources to build the structure and
  relationships over time
• Funding one agency when effort is supported by
  several agencies
• Fiscal agent/lead operates the program while the
  other collaborators watch

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Current Thinking

• Means to an end and not an end
• Goal greater results, scale, reach, efficiencies
• Breakthrough results rather than small changes
  (e.g. scale, systems change)
• Forced marriages rarely work
• Form follows function only the structure needed
• Few collaborations save money
• Added costs planning, coordination, staff time,
  promotion and communication

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Concept Appreciative Inquiry

• Invented at Case Western Business School
• Focuses on what works, rather than what does not
• A positive approach to find solutions
• Energy liberated for creativity and new ideas
• Over focus on problems blocks solutions

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Partnerships that WorkAppreciative Reflection

• Remember a time when you were in a partnership
  that was effective, rewarding and mutually
  beneficial
• What did that feel like?
• What were the features that made that partnership
  successful?
• What might you apply from that partnership to
  your current partnership to enhance it?

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University-Community Partnership Challenges

• University culture bureaucracy
• University incentives
• University schedule
• Unequal resources
• Unequal rewards
• Overwhelming community need
• Community suspicion
• Politics
• Sustainability More than a project?

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Positive Practices

• CLIMATE
• Recognize, celebrate, mentor, reflect
• COLLABORATE
• Co-teach formal agreements clarify mutual
  expectations and benefits joint proposal
  development active advisory boards plan
  evaluation at outset build mutual trust
  prepare for conflict
• Share power, resources, control, credit open
  honest communication TAKE TIME!
• Volunteers vs. internsprepare
• Create resource guides, link websites, joint
  seminars, community access to university
  resources (e.g. library, gym), cut red tape

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Positive Practices

• CURRICULAR INTEGRATION
• Support faculty to integrate learning objectives
  model syllabi engage community in curricula
  design alternative forums for reflection (brown
  bags, issue guides) clearly define purpose of
  community involvement integrate
  interdisciplinary perspective consider policy
  implications and advocacy.

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Positive Practices

• FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
• Appoint faculty coordinator and faculty mentors
  nurture those with community interests
  externships in community orientation promotion
  incentives job descriptions
• PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT
• Integrative empowerment evaluation with
  stakeholder feedback and ownership designated
  space annual work plan marketing plan focus on
  quality over quantity.

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Positive Practices

• STUDENT PARTICIPATION
• Program ambassadors and assistants facilitate
  reflection advisory boards present to
  university and community groups and boards
  development of collaborative leadership skills
• In class presentations school and community
  recognition student designed projects

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Positive Practices

• SUSTAINABILITY
• Incorporate into strategic framework tie to
  recruitment, retention workforce development
  include in accreditation and other reports
• Adequate staffing and high profile champions in
  school and community mandatory community
  participation
• Commitment to academic excellence
• Demonstrate value and reciprocity with community
• CONTINOUSLY QUESTION REALITY!

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• SO WHAT?
• An end and a means
• A laboratory for change
• sustaining change

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Social Change--Levels

• Individual
• Cultural
• Organizational
• Systemic
• Structural

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Social Change--Individual

• Resiliency capacity to adapt to change
• Attitude
• Values
• Culture
• Behavior

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Social Change--Systemic and Structural

• PROCESS vs. PRODUCT
• CAPACITY BUILDING vs. RESULTS
• IMAGINATION vs. IMPACT
• Consensus building
• Direct action organizing
• Policy advocacy
• Charismatic leadership
• ALL NEEDED AT SOME POINT

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Transaction vs. Transformation

• Outputs?Outcomes?Impacts
• How do we get there? Invest in building capacity
• Personal role (go back to individual change
  slide)
• Institutional role
• Community role
• Societal role
• Resilience, spiral dynamics, integral theory,
  authentic leadership

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Thank you

• Daniella Levine
• Human Services Coalition
• 260 NE 17th Terrace, Suite 200
• Miami, Florida 33132
• 305 576 5001 x 19
• daniellaL_at_hscdade.org