Finding Partners and Building Coalitions (The MOUs That Roared)
OPENING REMARKS
A woman called me to ask where she could get a grant to fund her “fabulous” idea. “I want to start a summer program that takes at-risk kindergarteners and high-achieving inner-city teenagers to camp in the Catskill Mountains for three weeks,” she explained. “The teenagers will be camp counselors and work on reading skills and social skills with the young children, along with sports and arts and crafts. In return, the high school students will get a stipend and community service credit, along with three weeks of fresh air. Participation in this camp will look great on their college applications and we may get some good students interested in teaching or social work.”
A great program, right? But when I asked her if she had gotten support from the local schools, community groups, churches, parent associations, or anyone at all, she gave me this quizzical look as if to say, “Why would I do that? I simply need a grant to pay for the idea.”—EK
No matter how well designed you think your program is, before it can evolve into a winning proposal, you must have at the table the right people with the right attitudes and the right expertise and knowledge representing the right organizations. “At the table” is sometimes a polite (but inaccurate) way of saying that a lot of different organizations support your idea but are doing nothing to demonstrate that support. To turn a good idea into a winning program, the right partners really have to be actively involved. At a real table. And they have to be there willingly and maybe for a number of weeks or even months. Designing a high-quality program is not something that can be done quickly by someone like the woman with a fabulous idea in the opening remarks box.
Is This Where Collaboration Comes In?
We have mentioned collaboration throughout this book, and we’ll continue to mention it in the next lessons. Collaboration is one of those words that everyone throws around, assuming that it’s simple to do, as natural as breathing. In truth, collaboration does not come naturally to most people because it goes against everything we have learned and believe. In No More Teams! Michael Schrage*reminds us that although most Americans say they want to be team players, they’ll grab their bats and balls and head for home unless each of them can be team captain.
Americans usually respect rugged individualism, often viewing people who believe in working together as wimpy idealists or non-self-starters who don’t have an original bone in their dreary, bureaucratic bodies. Yet whether it is in the operating room, the boardroom, the basketball court, or just about anywhere else, people who have a genuine problem and a limited amount of time to address it need to work together to come up with a solution. Schrage says:
“The act of collaboration is an act of shared creation or shared discovery. James Watson, who won a Nobel Prize with Francis Crick for their discovery of the double helix, put it simply: ‘Nothing new that is really interesting comes without collaboration.’”
Because collaboration is a lot easier to say than to do, most people have no training in how to be a valuable partner, occasionally leading critics to complain that someone is being “too inclusive.” But true collaboration means leaving a lot of baggage at the door. It means coming to the table—yes, really sitting down and talking face-to-face—with an open mind and a commitment to solving a problem in an honest way. And a commitment to finding the best possible solution to the problem, even if that solution doesn’t necessarily benefit (financially or otherwise) all the partners at the table. This truly is not easy.
Why Is Collaboration So Important?
Because most of us don’t really understand collaboration, we tend to be skeptical about its importance, sometimes viewing it as mere jargon. But it is important to collaborate for two reasons. First, the more people with expertise and diverse points of view who are sincerely committed to developing a solution to a pressing problem, the more likely it is that the solution—the program—will be well developed and of a high quality. Second, the more individuals and organizations involved in developing the program, the more individuals and organizations who will actually support the program, agree with the need for it, and agree that the program they have worked out is really likely to meet the need. And the more people who believe in the program, the more likely they are to promote it, recruit participants, and give it good publicity by enthusiastic word of mouth.
What Makes Collaboration So Difficult?
Most people think they want to work together, think they’re collaborative, and think collaboration is a good thing. But it isn’t easy to leave our preconceived notions, our long-held beliefs, at the door without learning how to do this. It isn’t easy to replace our usual roles, responsibilities, goals, and expectations with an entirely new set. For instance, if you represent a not-for-profit organization that works with children, you’ve probably adopted a particular approach to youth development that you think is the best way to help children achieve their greatest potential. But a new partner may have a completely different—but also very successful—approach. Does one of you have to forgo your tested views in collaborating with the other? Is it possible to incorporate both views? Is there an underlying philosophy that could help you both be comfortable with the details and outcomes of the program?
You and your counterpart, as directors of your respective programs, are both accustomed to making decisions, solving problems as they arise, promoting the program to outsiders. Who will do this now?
And there are other problems, as the following questions indicate.
The Money I Can Get from This Grant Is Barely Enough for My Own Program. Why Do I Have to Share It with a Partner?
This is a very good question, but there’s a problem—a big one—inherent in it. Sometimes we only think about collaborating to work on a grant proposal, not to work on significant problems that confront us every day, whether there’s a grant to apply for or not. Talk about the need for a culture change, a paradigm shift! Collaboration must become a way of life, a natural response, not just a grant response.
For years, government agencies, schools, nonprofit organizations, colleges, and so on would independently design programs or promote the same old programs—and submit them to the grantmakers. And often they won the grants. Then grant seekers were told by funders to collaborate on grant proposals and then share resources after grants were won. Public schools were required to include parochial school students in their grant-funded programs. City agencies were told to show which not-for-profit organizations were involved in program development. Nonprofit organizations were told they had to partner with each other, and with businesses and religious institutions, not to mention government agencies. And everyone felt like throwing his or her hands up and crying, “Uncle!”
The greatest shock about collaborating on a grant was that—gulp—not every partner would automatically receive grant funds from every partnership grant. Collaboration cannot only be about money. If it were, we would probably need a new word to describe it. Collaboration must be seen as a strategy to make things better by working together in a sensible, methodical manner. But that strategy can include something for everyone—well, maybe not everyone, but for several of the partners. For example, in a welfare-to-work consortium, the lead agency (funders always expect one agency to receive the check and be responsible for administering the grant) may get less money to operate the program itself, but a bit more for administrative costs. Or one partner may take on an element of the program for which it is especially prepared (perhaps a school or a nonprofit GED program handles the literacy component) and refer participants to a second partner for another element (say, job training), to another for child care, and to still another for job placement. Each partner may receive a different amount of funding, depending on the cost or the partner’s ability to contribute in-kind services or other support. In better economic times, some partners may be able to absorb their piece of the project into their own ongoing operations. A long-term collaborative approach can ensure that as different grant opportunities come along, the other partners will benefit, with the full support of those who get funding in this round.
That said, there still may be times when a collaboration for a particular grant just doesn’t make economic sense to any of the partners. A funder may require collaboration in hopes that it will cost less than grants to individual organizations, even when it is clear that the collaboration actually could increase the project’s cost. Although some grantmakers consider the extra costs associated with creating and sustaining a collaboration, and provide a bit more money to support this work, in the current economic climate it is very possible that there are no resources available within any of the partner organizations—or in the grant—to pay for the work involved. Although collaboration may indeed be the best way to get things done in the long term, sometimes the partners have to decide not to pursue a particular funding opportunity. And we think you should let the grantmakers know why.
But We Provide All of the Services That Are Called For in the Request for Proposals. Why Do We Need a Partner?
Another good question. Our position is that sometimes you should not pursue a grant that requires a partnership, especially if you believe that the amount of funding provided could not support the program that you and your partners would have to implement jointly. But very often a funder who is asking for a community coalition or partnership is looking for results that a single agency cannot possibly achieve. It is rare that a single agency really offers all of the services that the grantmaker envisions in such a request for proposals. For example, a coalition of health providers, schools, and social service providers may have a better chance to have an impact on children’s asthma than any one of them alone.
DISCUSSION
Increasingly, government agencies and many foundations are calling for collaborations among not-for-profit organizations, or between nonprofits and businesses within a community, or between community-based organizations and larger institutions like a university, a city agency, a hospital, a board of education, or a national or regional nonprofit. Sometimes a group of grantmakers themselves form a consortium to pool their resources, again believing that they can have a greater, more widespread impact this way. If a partnership is called for, ignoring this requirement is fatal to a proposal.
All nonprofit organizations of any size should be reaching out to other organizations in their field of interest and/or in their community, even if these organizations have been competitors in the past. They should be discussing ways of working together productively to address issues of mutual concern. It may be necessary for organizations whose programs overlap to rethink which of them will provide which services. All of this takes time, usually much more time than is available between the time a funding announcement appears and the deadline for proposal submission; this is why collaboration should be ongoing and not only grant related.
Although the lead agency in almost all partnership arrangements must be a government agency, a school district, or incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization with tax-exempt status, smaller organizations that are not incorporated may be important partners in a project and may strengthen a proposal by demonstrating a true community partnership. This is a good way for small grassroots organizations to become known to a wider audience than just their immediate neighborhoods, which is important to their own fundraising efforts.
If you do not presently have relationships with other community organizations, you should be approaching every sector of the community, from churches to merchants, from tenants’ associations to civic and immigrant associations, from schools and school districts to hospitals and health centers, to discuss ways you might work together. If there are existing task forces (such as a task force to combat drug use among teens or one to address domestic violence in a certain immigrant community), join them. If you can’t join, see if you can observe meetings or even become part of working groups that may form. If there are none, talk with other agencies about forming one.
City agencies with sites in the community should be approached. Elected and appointed officials at every level of government also should be included in discussions. If you’re not a member of the local Lions Club, or Kiwanis, or chamber of commerce, consider joining. The broader and more diverse the representation within a community, and the more convincing the coordination and integration among partners, the stronger the proposal and the better the chances for funding.
And even if you’re not currently seeking any funding, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much support community organizations can provide for one another. Maybe the Rotary Club will throw a holiday party for the children at your day-care center; maybe a bank will provide a meeting room for a class in English for speakers of other languages; maybe the school board will find money for snacks for children in the after-school program.
How Do We Show the Funder That We’ve Worked Together on a Grant Proposal?
Some (not all) grant applications that require collaboration also require documentation of the development of a collaborative program. Notices of meetings, lists of those invited, attendance lists, agendas, and other such documents may prove useful; you should start and keep a file.
Letters of commitment (also called memoranda of understanding, or MOUs) spell out the ways groups will work together, refer clients, participate on advisory boards, and so on. MOUs are an important way to document a partnership, replacing the bland, redundant “support” letters commending the program that organizations so often attached to their proposals in the past. MOUs should be included in a proposal package, if they are allowed. They should be considered minicontracts. Normally they will be presented in an appendix (and are discussed in more detail in Lesson 15); occasionally you will be asked to put them into the body of the proposal. In any case, a paragraph or two about the partners should be included in the proposal narrative.
Reviewers generally can tell if a collaborative effort has been thrown together for a particular grant, especially if they are familiar with your community. Again, outreach and discussions about possible joint efforts should begin now.
When a collaboration is proposed in a funding request, each partner’s activities, roles, and responsibilities should be addressed with the same level of attention, and their interactions must be presented fully and in detail. For example, for the welfare-to-work consortium mentioned earlier, details of each partner’s contribution would be described, along with the ways in which each partner would identify, refer, and provide support to participants and interact with the other partners in the consortium. Which partner or partners would handle job training? How, and from which other partners, would clients be referred for training? How, and to which partners, would clients be referred for job placement, child care, social services, GED preparation, or college courses?
Government collaborations. For grant seekers representing local government agencies, collaborations can present a more complicated set of issues. Many government agencies, because they are responsible for specific services like transportation, sanitation, or housing, are inexperienced at working with one another, let alone with “outsiders” like schools, not-for-profit organizations, colleges, and hospitals. Collaboration among government agencies involves not only potential competition for dollars, but competition for credit, for attention, for praise—maybe from the mayor, the governor, the press. If the police department collaborates with the health department to strengthen the latter’s application, and this helps win the grant, then where is the police department when the press conference is held? The answer is that all partners should be viewed as teammates, integral to the winning of the grant—and included in the press conference to announce the grant! When a baseball team wins the World Series, the player who hit the tie-breaking home run—or the team manager or team owner—isn’t honored alone. All teammates, managers, and coaches are honored together.
Many not-for-profit organizations shy away from working with government agencies or with large nonprofit institutions like universities and hospitals because they are afraid they’ll be swallowed up—disregarded and disrespected by the larger, more powerful agencies. And we’ve seen this happen. It is critical that the larger organizations, which usually take the lead in the proposal process and manage the grants when they are received, work to keep the process and lines of communication open to avoid shutting out the smaller groups. Timely input and ongoing support from those closest to the community can make or break a project.
So, as we’ve said, learning to collaborate—learning not to act like Big Brother or the King of the Road—is important for government agencies. If you want to solve your compelling problems (and win competitive grants), you have to view not-for-profit organizations of all sizes as real partners. And not-for-profits must, in turn, stop viewing government with the same reserve (at best) or distrust as in the past. State and local agencies must be seen as the valuable resources they are—both to enhance grant proposals as partners and to provide useful data, statistics, insights, and experience in implementing programs.
As George Bernard Shaw once said, “Success comes from taking the path of maximum advantage instead of the path of least resistance.”
Pop Quiz
True or False?
1. Collaboration isn’t that hard—we’re all essentially team players.
2. Every organization that collaborates on a grant application should, without exception, receive at least some money once funding is approved.
3. If a grant doesn’t require collaboration, don’t collaborate.
4. City agencies like to collaborate with city agencies, schools like to collaborate with schools; it is when they have to cross sectors that problems rear their ugly heads.
Short Answer
1. The best way to actually prove that you collaborated with other groups on a grant proposal is to include ______ and ______ in your application. (Give two examples.)
2. List five different sectors of the community that might collaborate on a winning grant. _____, _____, _____, _____, _____.
3. What are some synonyms for “collaboration”? _____, _____, _____.
* Schrage, Michael. 1995. No More Teams! Mastering the Dynamics of Creative Collaboration. New York: Broadway Books.