Mobilizing your Community into Collaborative Action

1. Mobilizing your Community into Collaborative Action Liz Weaver Vice President, Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement liz@tamarackcommunity.ca

2. Trust Turf Tight Loose The Collaboration Continuum

3. Key Practices for Effective Collaboration

4. Assessing the Local Environment • Questions to consider: • Who is doing what? • Who is leading? • What collaborative efforts are already underway? • Who is missing? • What resources are available? • What do you want to do? • What will it take?

5. Community Context Factors • Prior history of collaboration – success and failure • Connectedness between leadership • Understanding and urgency of issue • Evidence to inform direction • Broad Community Engagement

6. Mapping Community Leadership • YourCapacity • Community Capacity • Your Convening Capacity • Identifying Appropriate Partners • Bringing individuals with lived experience into the conversation • Assessing Risks and Rewards

7. CommunityPartners • Business • Expertise, credibility and voice, connections, funding and other resources, leadership • Government • Expertise, connections to elected officials, funding and other resources, policy change, leadership • Nonprofit Organizations • Expertise, experience on the ground, service delivery, ability to ramp up change efforts • Citizens with Lived Experience • Expertise about the issues, practical and relevant solution, leadership, connections to other citizens

8. Look to Other Communities

9. 5 Lessons about Collaboration • A big clear issue that only a collaborative can tackle • Leadership that drives the process • Staffing for Follow through • Defining the role of the collaborative and what it will accomplish • Balancing process and progress • Five Lessons on Collaboration, Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction and Jobs Prosperity Collaborative

10. Lessons Learned in Canada Get the bird’s eye and worm’s eye views Navigate the local context Learn by doing Make both vertical and horizontal links Be persistent and have appropriate expectations http://tamarackcommunity.ca/g3s61_VC_2011g.html

11. Creating Clarity

12. The Collaborative Premise If you bring the appropriate people together in constructive ways with good information, they will create authentic visions and strategies for addressing the shared concerns of the organizations and the community. • David Chrislip, The Collaborative Leadership Fieldbook • http://tamarackcommunity.ca/g3s5l.html

13. Collaborative Premise - Shared Agreements • Shared concern needs to be addressed • Identify a need to work together • Determine how to work together • Shared understanding of the information • Shared definition of the problem • Agreement on solutions • Agreement on action steps

14. From Isolated Impact to Collective Impact Isolated Impact • Funders select individual grantees • Organizations work separately • Evaluation attempts to isolate a particular organization’s impact • Large scale change is assumed to depend on scaling organizations • Corporate and government sectors are often disconnected from foundations and non-profits. Collective Impact • Funders understand that social problems – and their solutions – arise from multiple interacting factors • Cross-sector alignment with government, nonprofit, philanthropic and corporate sectors as partners • Organizations actively coordinating their actions and sharing lessons learned • All working toward the same goal and measuring the same things

15. Preconditions for Collective Impact • Influential Champion(s) • Urgency of issue • Adequate Resources

16. Collective Impact • Common agenda • Shared measurement systems • Mutually reinforcing activities • Continuous communication • Backbone support organization • John Kania and Mark Kramer, Winter 2011

17. Using a comprehensive, multi-sectorapproach communities can … • Raise the profile of poverty. • Build a constituency for change. • Encourage collaborative ways of working. • Begin to shift systems underlying poverty. • Generate changes for a large number of people living in poverty.

18. Collaboration Success Factors • Influential and credible convener(s) • Cross-sector, connected leadership table • Challenging community aspiration • Clearly articulated purpose and approach • High degree of resident mobilization • Research which informs the work

19. Building Relationships

20. What is Trust?

21. Power in Relationship Power penetrates all relationships and work. • Openly claim the power we bring; • Be aware of our own corruptibility; • Refuse to deny our power; and • Resolve any conflicts that grow from the use of power. If we don’t embrace all actions, we fall into the dark side of power.

22. Forms of Power • Charisma • Connections • Expertise • Fame & Visibility • Integrity & Credibility • Life Experience • Persuasion • Resources

23. Roadblocks & Resistance • Power Dynamics • Partner Motivation • Process-Product Tension • Too Big to Fail • Death by 1000 knives • Reading the Roadmap – bridges and potholes • Keeping up with the Changes

24. So What?

25. Context