Tool Kit - Creating And Maintaining Partnerships

Toolkit

 Creating and maintaining partnerships
Introduction

Our Story
for creating and maintaining partnerships

Tips For Success
for creating and maintaining partnerships

Links
for creating and maintaining partnerships

INTRODUCTION

Building healthier communities is complex work and by its very nature has a better chance for success if a variety of people from diverse areas work together towards a common goal. The goal could be as narrow as obtaining funding for a specific intervention, or as broad as trying to improve the overall quality of life for people in the community.

Developing a coalition or partnership helps to concentrate the community's focus on a particular problem, creates alliances among those who might not normally work together, and keeps the community's approach to issues consistent.

Goals for partnerships are as varied as the partnerships themselves, but often are developed to:

• Influence or develop public policy—usually on a specific issue.

• Change people's attitudes and/or behavior (reducing smoking or drug use, for instance).

• Build a healthy community. This term refers globally both to the community 's physical health (including medical and health promotion services) as well as the environment, community planning, housing, violence prevention, youth development and other factors.

Benefits of Partnerships

The advantages of forming partnerships are many. Some of the most common are to:

• Pool resources. By working together, agencies and individuals may have the resources and skills to accomplish a task that none of them could have done on their own. 

• Provide more effective and efficient delivery of programs and avoiding duplication of effort. Gathering all the players involved in a particular issue can result in a more cohesive and comprehensive intervention. Agencies can split up or coordinate responsibilities in ways that give participants greater access to programs and allow for a greater variety of services.

• Obtain or provide services. It may take multiple partners - either initially or over the long term - to design, obtain funding for, and/or implement a needed intervention in the community.

• Increase understanding and communication. A partnership allows community groups and agencies that might not otherwise work together the opportunity to get to know each other.

• Empower the community to take control of its future.

• Create long-term, permanent social change. Real change usually takes place over a period of time through people gaining trust, sharing ideas, and getting beyond their preconceptions to the real issues underlying community needs.

Challenges of Partnering (Note: This content was adapted from the partnership section of the Community Tool Box

It is helpful to know the common difficulties people experience when partnering so that attention can be paid to these issues from the very beginning. Common barriers include:

• Turf issues.  Organizations can be sensitive about sharing their work, their target populations, and their funding. Part of the work of starting a coalition may be to convince a number of organizations that working together will in fact both benefit all of them and better address their common issues.
• Unequal power base or contribution from partners. Sometimes partners are perceived as ‘less important’ either because of their ability to contribute financially, or for some other reason (ie. less political clout). It is important to make sure that everyone has an equal voice in the decision making process.
• History of conflict. Organizations, individuals, or the community as a whole may have had experiences in the past that have convinced them that working with certain others - or working together at all - is simply not possible. A new coalition may have to contend with this history before it can actually start the work it needs to do.
• Domination by "professionals". In a rush to solve problems often agency administrators, local politicians, business leaders, and others, take over and neglect to involve the people most affected by the issue at hand or other community members.

• Funding. The difficulty of finding funding is an obvious obstacle. Less obvious are the dangers of available funding that pushes the coalition in the wrong direction or requires it to act too quickly to address the issue effectively. New coalitions have to be alert to all possible funding possibilities, but have clear understanding about the kind of funding they apply for and accept.
  
  

Failure to provide and create leadership within the coalition. If leadership isn't available and can't be developed from within the coalition, its existence is probably at risk. It may be necessary to bring in an outside facilitator and/or training in collaborative leadership to salvage the situation.

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