When life gives you scraps, make a quilt.

We talk a lot about working with other organizations in order to avoid duplication and share resources. Then when we have an opportunity to collaborate we drag our feet. Why? Maybe we tried it once and had a bad experience. We were forced to work with someone who was not trustworthy. They took all of the credit for successes and we got all of the blame for any problems.

You can find a dozen reasons NOT to collaborate with other organizations. If you are not really sincere about wanting to collaborate, better to admit it and leave this module until you really need to do it.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After finishing this module you should be able to:

1. List 5 reasons for and against working with another organization.
2. Describe 5 "degrees" of coordination between two organizations.
3. Describe a process for implementing coordinated programs.
4. Make a sincere effort for coordinating an educational program with another organization.

OPTIONAL EXERCISE:

If you are not really certain about interorganizational coordination maybe you need to clarify your own thoughts. Work with a partner or a learning group to list the potential advantages and disadvantages of working with other organizations to accomplish an educational program. See if you can list 10 reasons on each side of the issue.

DEGREE OF COORDINATION

Agreeing to collaborate with another organization does not necessarily mean "all or nothing." Note the following degrees of coordination.

1. No Coordination (no activity nor desire to work with the other organization even though they may provide similar programs).

2. Low Degree of Coordination

a) informal and infrequent contacts between individuals

b) exchange of general information to keep each other informed

c) clients are referred to the other organization when it can better respond to the clients' particular needs.

3. Moderate Degree of Coordination

a) formal exchange of information (planned joint meetings, exchange of newsletters, annual report, meeting agendas)

b) exchange of personal and resources for particular programs

c) joint projects or programs.

4. High Degree of Coordination

a) written agreements or contracts

b) joint budgets

c) same (or overlapping) boards of directors

d) joint ownership (of building, offices, equipment).

5. Merger (the two organizations become one).

This list should give you some ideas about coordination with another organization. This list of degrees of coordination, however, does not tell you how to work together to get to a preferred degree of coordination. That comes from a process which we will examine next.

PROCESS FOR IMPLEMENTING COORDINATED PROGRAMS

1. Identify the area (i.e., program) to be impacted.

2. See if the other organization is willing to discuss a coordinated program.

3. Carefully and thoroughly define the needs of each organization and the potential problems that each organization might encounter.

4. At this point each of the organizations needs to independently determine that the opportunities are important enough and the potential problems are small enough to proceed in discussions.

5. For each of the problems, specify optional solutions. Agree on the best solution for both organizations for each problem.

6. Examine resources and agree on who provides what.

7. Write goals and objectives.

8. Incorporate the answers to 5, 6, and 7 into a plan which tells Who does What by When.

9. Each organization should study the plan and approve it or amend it and continue with the planning until joint agreement is reached.

10. Joint agreement should be formalized by signing the plan or a memorandum of understanding that states why and how the agencies will coordinate their efforts. This document can be a very simple one- page document or it can be a legal contract which anticipates possible eventualities that are not addressed in the plan.

11. Both organizations should agree on situations where each may need to abandon the effort to coordination. Worst case scenarios are better discussed in advance (privately) than dealt with in the middle of program implementation (publicly).

12. Follow the plan (or the agreement).

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Which organizations have similar programs and interests as yours?

2. Which organization would be easiest (and most beneficial) to coordinate a program with your organization?

3. Would coordination benefit your program and theirs?

4. What problems might your organization (and theirs) encounter?

5. What benefits might be anticipated with a successfully coordinated program?

6. What would be the worst case scenario? How would you deal with it?

EXERCISE:

Work with a partner in your organization to answer the questions above and anticipate the outline of an agreement with another organization for a joint program.