Partnerships - Cooperation, Coordination, Collaboration
Every community-based organization needs a strategy for forging and stewarding partnerships with other organizations, but that strategy also needs to be clearly articulated and understood across the organization so that appropriate resources are allocated. Paul C. Light, in "Making Nonprofits Work: A Report on The Tides of Nonprofit Management Reform" provides a really simple and clear matrix that defines types of partnerships and the level of resources needed to sustain them.
Cooperation | Coordination | Collaboration |
Contributing Resources Agencies contribute resources to another agency’s project or effort. | Reconciling Activities Agencies adjust or combine existing programs to deliver services more effectively. | Sharing Program Responsibilities Agencies come together as a new entity to provide services or to manage a resource. |
Promoting Others Agencies willingly share information about the work or services of others. | Sharing Resources or Programs Agencies that use the same good or service agree to share in its cost. | Creating New Systems Agencies work to create and implement a new model to deliver services or address a public problem. |
Sharing Information Agencies share information on a formal or informal basis. | Producing Joint Projects Agencies depend upon each other for producing a specific product or event; may be short-term. | Planning Collectively Agencies develop a vision or conduct a study for the management of a resource or the alleviation of a social problem. |
If you start at the bottom of the matrix and move up the matrix, the level of resource involvement increases as does the level of power sharing necessary when you move to the right. The lowest resource/least power-sharing model is "Sharing Information" and the highest resource/most power-sharing level is "Shared Program Responsibilities." While I find the model missing some nuance, I also think that it provide a strong framework for early partnership discussions, for reaching consensus, and for creating an accompanying stewardship model for different levels of partnerships and relationships.
What do you think?
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