September 28, 2012
ONN Conference, Policy to Practice
September 28, 2012
On September 28, 2012 twenty-five recipients of the Partnership Grants Program met to discuss organizational and sector capacity issues. Specifically, the recipients considered whether a network of twenty-seven Partnership Grants might be developed to allow the unique projects to work together, to learn from one another and to strengthen not-for-profit (NFP) sector capacity in Ontario. Mowat NFP committed to share its research agenda and report back on the discussions at the Partnership Grants Working Session.
Participants were asked to comment on a series of questions relating to four capacity themes common across the projects: collaboration, leadership, sustainability and learning. Participants discussed each theme in small groups. The following report provides a general overview of the discussions as well as potential opportunities for further study, knowledge sharing and collaboration.
There may be future opportunities to convene the 27 Partnership Grant recipients over the course of the three year grant term. The group expressed interest in sharing contact information to continue an informal dialogue and communicate areas of shared interest and knowledge.
Collaboration
Inherent benefits of collaboration include strengthening relationships, fostering connections and breaking down silos across the sector. Participants viewed collaboration as including both formal and informal partnerships around activities, advocacy, communications, and shared platforms. NFPs collaborate to find low-cost solutions for sustainability, to access new and innovative ideas, to influence public policy and to gain broader reach into the communities they serve. They may collaborate on short-term projects or find enough shared interest to collaborate long-term. Collaboration may happen organically as individuals and/or organizations connect and partner on issues of common concern. In other cases collaboration may be required through funding agreements or deliberately sought out to create sustainable services.
Building the sector’s capacity to collaborate provides unique opportunities to learn and solve problems. However, challenges related to partnership can seem overwhelming to organizations under time and budget constraints. Effective collaborations require leadership, relationship management and coordination. Allocating time and money to collaborate effectively are major challenges to the process. For those organizations seeking opportunities to collaborate, identifying appropriate partners may be the first challenge. Organizational differences in culture, governance structure, size and scope present further challenges as they take more time and resources to coordinate. Finally, a lack of trust resulting from funding competition between organizations can challenge the process even further.
Capturing the value and impact of collaboration is a complex but necessary task. Measuring collaboration is important to identifying best practices and frameworks for future collaboration, as well as for understanding how these partnerships add to the capacity of the sector. Building a powerful narrative that communicates the collective impact of this work will be critical. Measuring impact may also include documenting unintended outcomes related to both the successes and failures of the collaboration for the purpose of offering vital learnings for future directions.
Leadership
Leadership capacity was framed as the ability to advance issues and ideas across organizations and communities. Leaders are sometimes executive officers, but may also be volunteers, community members, young people and/or front line staff with the ability to promote issues and engage stakeholders. They are community builders who are invested in the projects they promote.
Common approaches to leadership development involve knowledge sharing to build individual, organizational and sector capacity. Many organizations and networks are using mentorship as a way to develop this leadership. Mentorship not only provides a development opportunity for young leaders but also promotes inter-generational learning through skills building in technology and innovation. However, cultural, language and/or generational differences can make it difficult for mentors to connect with their mentees. Furthermore, those currently in leadership positions note their heavy workload limits their ability to dedicate time to mentorship. For many small NFPs, the lack of human resource capacity, including processes, staff and coordination, results in a lack of capacity to develop leadership. Improved human resource capacity is necessary to create a scope and framework to develop the sector’s leadership.
Training and collaboration to enable skills development at governance and organizational levels are additional strategies being used to build leadership capacity. Many organizations are sharing knowledge through cross-network leadership training, communities of practice and advisory boards as well as through workshops, clubs, and forums. An important challenge to enhancing leadership is that boards of directors may not prioritize less immediate issues such as leadership development in light of urgent sustainability issues. Executive Directors need strategies to demonstrate the importance of leadership development to their boards.
Success indicators will be critical to evaluating the impact of leadership capacity initiatives. Understanding what has worked, what can be replicated and what can be taken to scale will support strategies to develop leadership across the sector.
Sustainability
Sustainability is a pervasive and ongoing challenge throughout the sector. In this session, participants were focused on their capacity to develop resources and program offerings. In a broader sense, sustainability was also discussed as the continuation of knowledge, expertise and best practices that help maintain or grow the sector overall; to develop partnerships, programs and resources within organizations and across the sector.
Strategies for achieving sustainability within the sector and among the program grantees are diverse. NFPs are working to grow leadership, engage stakeholders and develop collaborations within the sector, as well as with the public and private sectors. For most organizations, sustainability involves planning, coordination and resource development. More efficient processes and systems are being developed to save on costs (shared administration, low cost infrastructure, leveraging technology etc.) and to exploit funding and financing opportunities. In some cases, multiple organizations are coming together to explore sustainability as a group, identifying the potential for common resource development.
A key strategy for improved sustainability is the diversification of funding and financing streams. NFPs must dedicate time and money to fundraising as well as to funding and grant applications often redirecting staff time from service delivery to resource development. It was noted that an important unintended consequence sometimes created by this context is “mission drift,” when donors and funders increasingly determine the direction of projects or organizations through short term funding opportunities. A few organizations are beginning to develop alternatives to traditional funding by using social enterprise as a way to provide independent financing to their projects and organizations to maintain their project and organizational visions. However, this too can run the risk of mission drift if not strategically developed.
As indicators for sustainability are identified and developed, it was noted that it will be important to ask not only if a program or organization can be continued, but whether it is generating the desired impact and is worth sustaining.
Learning
In order to sustain, grow and share knowledge, strategies to promote learning are needed; to share best practices and failures and to enhance organizational and sector capacity. People and organizations learn through training, leadership development, collaboration and communities of practice. Many organizations are leveraging their existing networks and technologies, such as learning portals, to provide opportunities for new and interactive learning.
Learning is a continual process. NFPs constrained by time, space and money, find it difficult to prioritize continual learning and knowledge sharing because this takes resources away from more immediate priorities of sustainability and service delivery. As well, the diversity of the sector, in terms of size, scope, capacity, region and mission, means that there are real challenges to transferring and sharing learning across networks and leveraging sector knowledge.
Indicators are needed to assess learning and to develop strong learning frameworks as we go forward. Consultation and discussions among recipients may uncover best practices in learning and knowledge sharing.
Going Forward
Two main outcomes emerged from the Partnership Grants Working Session. Participants expressed interest in developing a learning network across the 27 Partnership Grants, and the capacity to measure the success and change brought about by the projects at the end of the three-year grant term.
Over the three years, there will be multiple opportunities to leverage this network to build sector capacity through sharing of best practices and learning from the grants program, webinars and online knowledge networks, and an annual face-to-face meeting at the ONN conference to discuss our learning.
There was an expressed interest in developing indicators to measure the success of the Partnership Grants Program over the three-year term. As a first step, Mowat NFP will meet with ONN, Tamarack and MCI to explore a strategy for moving forward on this.
Mowat NFP and the ONN would like to thank all who participated in the Partnership Grants Working Session. We invite any comments and suggestions on this report and look forward to working with all of you in the future.
