Guidance for Building Partnerships and Collaborating Effectively

Purpose

• Practical guidance for building effective partnerships with regional and local organizations.

• Tips for identifying potential partners and communicating effectively to lay the groundwork for a productive collaboration.

Related Sections

• Building Trust

• Organizations and Channels

Identifying and engaging with partner organizations allows for opportunities to introduce your agency to a new landowner audience, meet landowners where they are, and amplify your capacity. However, finding and forging new partnerships has its own challenges.

Where to start?

Consider what it is you have to offer to potential partner organizations and their community members. The information or opportunities you offer should provide a specific benefit to the community members in a way that aligns with the goals of the partnering organization. A few examples:

While the examples may seem obvious, it can be a helpful exercise to list the many benefits of participating in a particular program and consider those benefits from the perspective of outside organizations. It’s also worthwhile to consider the aims and requirements of your program before pursuing a partnership. Even if a potential partner organization provides access to an audience group or community you are interested in reaching, their members may not meet your program requirements. You can ask: “Are your members woodland owners? Would this program be helpful to them?” When you develop your invitation or outreach materials, you can specify: “This workshop is for landowners with 20 or more acres of woodlands.” Clarity around what benefits you can provide (and also what you cannot do) will lay the groundwork for a more successful relationship. 

In some instances, particular organizations become the default point of engagement for new organizations seeking to reach their audience members, generally out of habit or convenience. However, strong partnerships grow when requests for collaboration are shared across a variety of organizations, rather than relying on the same ones repeatedly. Engaging a broader set of partners not only lightens the load but also creates new opportunities for collaboration and innovation. Similarly, if a particular organization does not have the capacity to collaborate with you (and you cannot provide capacity-support funding), it does not mean that their audience members might not value your programs. Instead, you can seek other ways to be present and support that organization and/or seek other creative partnerships focused on similar audiences.

Where to go?

Partnerships and collaborative efforts can range in intensity from forwarding an invitation to their network to working closely together to solve a common challenge. Decide what level of collaboration you hope for. More intensive collaboration with fewer organizations might be a more productive use of time if you are trying to build trust with a new-to-you audience. It will allow you to spend time understanding the organization and their community members, as well as amore time for building trust.

How to get there?

Clear communication is the best path forward. Be clear about:

• What you offer: Does your program provide benefits for their members that align with the organization’s mission? What financial, in-kind, or other benefits can you provide to the organization itself? This is particularly important if you are hoping for more intensive support and/or want to collaborate to solve a common challenge together.
  

• What your limits are: Is this a seasonal offering? Is there a deadline? How many landowners can you accommodate? What’s not included that people may think is? What timeline should they expect?
  

• Who this is it for: Are there program requirements? Are there geographic limitations?
  

• What you hope for: Do you want an introduction to their membership, a presentation from one of their staff members, a workshop at their facility, or long-term collaboration on a project? Be sure to share your goals with them and how you imagine the partnership will support both your goals and theirs.
  

• Why you are trustworthy: Do you have a testimonial and introduction from a trusted community member? Have you taken the time to carefully walk through the program/process with organizational leaders?
  

In addition, you can help your partners and collaborators communicate about you and your program to their members or network. Consider providing a brief flyer that the organization can share with their members, social media templates they can personalize, or talking points they could use. The easier you make it for others to accurately represent your program or offering, the more likely it is that the message will make it through. 

Relationships Must be Nurtured

Even simply passing on an invitation involves some level of trust. A potential partner will want to know that their members or network will be in good hands if they vouch for you or your program. Allocate time in your planning to meet with organizational leaders to answer questions and walk them through the offerings you have available (rather than, for example, asking someone to forward an invitation to an event being held in two days). Even better, spend time understanding their organizational goals, and the needs and barriers their members face, so you can adjust your offerings to meet those needs (e.g., meeting time and location, particular informational gap) or even collaborate to develop shared programming.

Be open to feedback and suggestions. In particular, when working with a community that is less familiar with and to you, trying a new approach, activity, or format could make a significant difference in how your message is received. Gracefully accept feedback and suggestions with the knowledge that the go-to methods or topics that work in your traditional programming may not be appropriate in a new situation, and your collaborators or partners are experts in their fields. Let your partners know that you value their input and feedback and tell them when you make changes based on their suggestions.

Frequent staff turnover is a common barrier to maintaining trusting relationships between organizations. No one wants to repeat their organizational goals and membership needs when a new staff member takes over their region or the program they’ve been partnering on. Consider the following to help manage this issue:

• Involve higher-level staff that don’t typically turn over as frequently. They may not be involved in the daily activities but can supervise and provide guidance to new staff or help fill in during times of transition. They should have an ongoing relationship with their counterpart at the partnering organization.
  

• When higher-level staff are unable to be involved, maintain at least two peer staff on the program. If one leaves, instruct the second to help mentor the replacement and provide an introduction to the partnering organization.
  

• Maintain clear notes about the relationship, the partnering organization and their members, such as barriers, promises made (with associated dates), what has worked well in the past and what has not. Include information about why certain decisions were made such as timing, location, or meeting topics. This will help maintain momentum with ongoing partnerships and provide essential guidance when there is turnover.
  

• Share credit and successes, both internally and externally, so colleagues, funders, and partners can all have a shared understanding of the importance and impact of the partnership or collaborative work. In addition to maintaining morale around the partnership, tracking this can help justify maintaining appropriate staffing levels for the effort.

Productively working with partners is an investment. It takes time and effort to do it well. In the long-term, it pays dividends in improved programming that meets the needs of new landowner audiences, partner organizations serving as amplifiers for your work and bringing new landowners to you, and ultimately enabling you to reach more landowners with the information and services you provide. Consider where or with whom you really need to be working. Then, begin by seeking one or two partners whose organizational goals align well with your own, and with whom you can begin building strong relationships. The experience of building one or two strong successful partnerships will give you insights into your own work and organizational needs so that finding and nurturing new partnerships in the future is even more efficient and effective.

If you would like to connect about this topic, please reach out to:

• Katherine Hollins, Principal, welsummerconsulting@gmail.com

• Josh Walden, Esq., Chief of Operations, jwalden@heirsproperty.org