Nonprofit Collaboration: A Guide to Successful Partnerships
An African proverb emphasizes the importance of collaboration: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” In other words, if your nonprofit wants to truly fulfill its mission and see long-lasting positive change in the world, you must be willing to work alongside other nonprofits.
When you join forces with other organizations, you can pool your resources, combine your expertise, and ultimately accomplish more for the communities you serve.
But collaboration takes effort, and it can be challenging to know where to begin. To help, we’ll cover everything you need to know about nonprofit collaboration and how to build successful partnerships:
Keep in mind that exchanging information is key to successful collaboration. Sharing data with other organizations allows you to track progress toward your common goals, make data-driven improvements to your programs and services, and celebrate milestones. More on this below!
What is Nonprofit Collaboration?
Nonprofit collaboration occurs when two or more organizations partner up to work toward a shared goal.
Typically, this involves nonprofits combining their resources and networks to produce joint programs, services, and fundraising efforts. By engaging in collaborations, organizations can do far more for their beneficiaries than they ever could on their own.
5 Benefits of Nonprofit Collaboration
You may be open to the idea of collaborating with other organizations, but how do you know if it’s worth the effort? Here are five benefits of nonprofit collaboration that you won’t want to miss out on:
Broader reach: When you work on your own, your ability to connect with new supporters is restricted. After all, you have to find potential supporters who are invested in your specific cause or focus area, and the geographic reach of your organization may also limit you. By partnering with other organizations, you gain access to a wider audience to share your message with and win support from.
Resource sharing: It’s no secret that nonprofits typically operate on slim budgets and scarce resources—40% of nonprofit leaders list “lack of resources” as a top challenge. By merging resources through nonprofit collaboration, you can optimize everyone’s available assets—from staff expertise to office space and technology—to offer more to your beneficiaries. Plus, sharing resources also helps make your organization’s work more sustainable.
Enhanced credibility: Every organization has a reputation, whether carefully managed or not. By partnering with other nonprofit organizations known for delivering on their promises and creating positive impact, your nonprofit can enhance its own reputation. This can do wonders for your brand as an employer, service provider, and community member.
Increased efficiency: Many hands make light work. When you grow your team through collaboration, you’ll have more people pushing your daily goals and objectives forward. This means that you’ll get more work done and generate more impact faster.
Enhanced expertise and innovation: Collaboration can breathe fresh life into your operations. When you discuss a certain program or initiative with a partner, they will likely bring unique ideas and different ways of looking at challenges to the table. This means you’ll get to try out new strategies and best practices that you may not have known about otherwise.
Examples of Successful Nonprofit Partnerships
Use these examples of collaboration in action to inspire your nonprofit. Here are two examples from our client organizations:
Your Market
Your Market is both a food pantry management app built on Salesforce and a community of organizations working to end food insecurity in Eastern Massachusetts. The Mystic Valley YMCA partnered with Deep Why Design to create the tool.
Organizations participating in the Your Market initiative use the tool to track food pantry visits, inventory, and deliveries. This keeps all that data in one central place and provides a full picture of the food security issue in Eastern Massachusetts, allowing participating agencies to better understand and address hunger in their communities.
Midas Collaborative
The Midas Collaborative’s mission is to advance the financial security of low- and moderate-income residents across Massachusetts. Collaboration is key to this organization’s process.
Midas has several partner organizations, and together, they provide a matched savings program that helps participants purchase life-changing assets like first homes or invest in things like higher education or starting a small business.
Deep Why Design helped Midas configure its Salesforce instance so that it can share real-time information about its matched savings program and other shared projects across its partner network.
Inspired by these projects? Check out more of our work to help nonprofits make the most of Salesforce!
Types of Nonprofit Collaborations
Nonprofit collaborations can take a few different forms. Here are some common types to know and consider as you form your own collaborations:
Partnership: A collaborative agreement between two or more partnerships where the organizations work toward a common goal while remaining independent organizations
Merger: The formal combination of two or more nonprofits into a single organization with one mission and governance structure
Joint Venture: A project-specific collaboration where two or more nonprofits create a new and separate entity to achieve specific goals while the organizations continue to operate independently
The types of collaborations that your nonprofit creates will depend on what you want to accomplish by working with other organizations and what you and your partners feel would be the best path toward your goals.
How to Start a Collaboration
Now that you know the basics of nonprofit collaborations, you’re likely eager to start forming connections with other nonprofits and working together toward exciting goals. Follow these steps to set yourself (and your partner organization(s)!) up for success:
Select the right collaborators. The success of your collaboration will hinge on who you choose to work with. Look for organizations with missions and values that align with your own. They should also offer complementary strengths to your nonprofit and be able to realistically merge and share resources.
Identify shared goals. Whether you want to expand certain services or reach new communities of beneficiaries, clearly lay out the goals that you and your partner organizations share. You should both be equally invested and committed to seeing the project through to completion. \
Define roles and responsibilities. Setting clear expectations at the start of a partnership can prevent misunderstandings down the line and ensure that everyone stays on the same page. Divvy up the work required to accomplish the shared goal and determine which organization is best suited for each task or role.
Create a clear agreement. A clear agreement holds both organizations accountable for their responsibilities in the collaboration and ensures that each organization is subject to as little risk as possible. This is where you’ll lay the groundwork for communication protocols and outline which resources each organization will provide, like funding, equipment, or staff time.
Use the 3Cs as a foundation. The 3Cs of collaboration are communication, coordination, and cooperation. When your collaborations are built on these key principles, you’ll be able to work more effectively with others and approach roadblocks to your success in a productive way.
Making the Most of Your Partnerships: The Role of Data
Collecting, storing, managing, sharing, and analyzing data will be essential in collaborating with other organizations. Doing so in an organized and efficient way will help you:
Measure your collective impact
Make informed decisions
Keep partners accountable
Identify both best practices and mistakes to avoid in the future
Create compelling reports to share with funders and donors
Protect sensitive information
At Deep Why Design, we specialize in helping organizations make the most of their data using the Salesforce ecosystem. We’ve helped several organizations thrive in their collaborations by connecting them through Salesforce shared services models.
We can help you roll out a shared solution over multiple organizations that:
Reduces duplicative information
Makes workflows more efficient
Increases access to high-quality information
Demystifies Salesforce and your shared data
Interested in working with us?
Wrapping Up: Working Together Successfully
No nonprofit operates in a vacuum, and no nonprofit can accomplish its mission without the support of others. Collaborations between multiple organizations allow nonprofits to unite over common goals and see more positive outcomes for the communities that they serve.
Use this guide to start your own nonprofit collaboration journey, beginning with selecting the right partners. And remember, how you use data and the tools you leverage for understanding and sharing that data will be critical to your success.
To learn more about using your data effectively, check out these additional resources:
Nonprofit Data Sharing: What Your Nonprofit Needs to Know. Data sharing allows you to boost transparency, collaboration, and decision-making with your supporters, partners, and other stakeholders. Learn more in this article.
Nonprofit Data Management: A Guide to Harnessing Your Data. Your nonprofit likely collects an enormous amount of data—so how do you manage it all and use it to your advantage? Explore this guide to find out.
How to Use Salesforce for Nonprofits: A Complete Guide. Salesforce is a well-known provider of digital tools and can benefit your nonprofit in a number of ways. Learn how to use Salesforce effectively in this article.