But wait! Before you partner
It starts with setting yourself (and your organization) up for a successful partnership before you even begin one.
We’ve all been there – a past partnership gone bad sours our appetite for future collaborations.
But if we let a negative past experience weigh us down, we miss out on some majorly impactful opportunities!
So, when considering a new partnership or collaboration, starting with a high level of awareness is key.
If you’re looking at potential partnership opportunities, you’ve got to come to the table ready and able to clearly articulate 3 things:
- Assets: The strengths and resources your organization can bring to a partnership – from special skill sets, to reputation, to physical space or funding.
- Challenges: Specific areas where your organization lacks resources, skills, or needed access. Do you have funds but lack a building? Have a strong brand, but lack a volunteer base?
- Values: Your top operational and cultural values as an organization, including your “deal breakers” – clarity on what values or activities performed by the potential partner would make a partnership untenable. This ensures alignment of values between partnering organizations for cohesive decision-making and brand integrity.
3 Types of Creative Collaborations
A few months ago, I came up with a framework to help us think more creatively about partnerships. I call it “Creative Collaborations.”
(I had the honor of presenting this framework in Texas this summer at the Points of Light conference. 🙂 If you were there – hey, how’s it going?!).
The framework divides creative collabs into 3 types:
Type 1: Innovating Partnerships
Innovating partnerships are when two or more organizations combine their activities to create a totally new, unexpected outcome.
In Raleigh, NC in 2023, two organizations with seemingly unrelated missions came together to launch an innovative approach to tackling unemployment.
They were a nonprofit pay-what-you-can restaurant, A Place at the Table, and a litter pickup organization, The Great Raleigh Cleanup.
As COVID-19 brought more unhoused clients to eat at A Place at the Table over the past 3 years, the organization found itself managing additional customers with no other place to go during the day. Enter: The Great Raleigh Cleanup, a nonprofit focused on city litter pick-ups and educating the community on environmental sustainability topics.
Together, the organizations brainstormed an opportunity to employ the restaurant’s clients experiencing homelessness to pick up litter and earn a living wage. They proposed the idea to the city, who provided seed funding for a pilot test.
They called the program “The Workforce”. It was so successful that it was awarded with a $500,000 multi-year contract with their city in the Summer of 2024.
Woah!
(By the way, if you’re interested in hearing more about how Great Raleigh Cleanup successfully landed that city contract, my YouTube video posting next week will talk you through it – Subscribe to the channel and set up alerts so you don’t miss it!)
Neither org had any program like this before they came together – thus, Innovating.
Type 2: Synergizing Partnerships
Synergizing partnerships address a unique goal or challenge for one organization while meeting an existing need for another.
Here’s a great example of this type of partnership at work:
In 2017, Activate Good, a volunteer mobilizing organization in Raleigh, NC, partnered with the local Food Bank to host a special event with an unexpected aim: To combat political polarization.
The Food Bank was chosen as a sort of “neutral ground” where Activate Good would bring recruited volunteers from Republican and Democrat political groups to sort food together. But there was a catch – while volunteering, participants had to learn three things they had in common with someone from the opposite group.
The event was a success! Participants laughed and discussed their personal lives together, taking selfies and sharing their mutual love of dogs, movies, and certain types of food.
This partnership allowed Activate Good to utilize volunteer engagement as a vehicle for community connection (addressing a unique goal), and the Food Bank benefited from the much-needed volunteer support (meeting an existing need).
Type 3: Optimizing Partnerships
Optimizing partnerships improve efficiency and effectiveness for organizations with complementary missions.
Case study:
The MLK Day of Service in 2024 saw multiple organizations come together in Raleigh and Durham, NC.
Note in the Pocket, which provides clothing for children, and The Green Chair Project, which refurbishes furniture for families in crisis, collaborated to streamline volunteer efforts for donation collection, sorting, and distribution for both causes during the Day of Service event.
How? They hosted their normally separate activities together, in a unified location.
Now, volunteers and donors could come to one location (instead of 2 or 3), drop off donations, and offer support. And, partnering organizations got exposure to each other’s supporters.
Making the process more efficient increased support for all involved. Optimizing!
Tips to Make Partnerships Really Work
Got an idea for a partnership (and a partner)?
Awesome.
It’s time to make things official with some structure and written guidelines.
Transparency is key in communications with potential partners. So is clarity on the goals of the partnership.
You’re going to want to put all the cards on the table and talk through your goals for partnership with your collaborator, and ask them about theirs.
Then, document these things and more in a written partnership agreement, which might include:
- Roles and responsibilities for leaders in both organizations
- An outline of the decision making process (is there a committee? A vote?)
- What resources, funding, time, materials are needed – and what each organization is providing for the partnership
- Top goals or key performance indicators – how both partners will know if the collaboration was a success
- A timeline: How and when the activities will take place, and meetings for discussing progress with one another
With these things in place, both partners can feel really clear and excited about the path forward!
