by Michael C. Gilbert
news@gilbert.org

You don't have to agree on a set of aesthetic principles in order to have a good time going to the movies with someone. You just have to agree on a movie. You don't have to agree on fundamental issues of community in order to share an apartment with someone. You just have to agree about how some things will get done around the house. You don't even have to agree completely about child rearing values in order to raise children with someone, to everyone's reasonable satisfaction. You only have to have some minimal boundaries about parental behavior and a respect for a diversity of styles.

So why is it then that so many nonprofit organizations, especially social change and activist organizations, act as though they must agree on all principles and values in order to collaborate successfully?

The great secret of successful collaboration is this: The only agreement you have to have is on what you are all going to do. That's it. You have to agree on actions. You don't have to bring the visions and missions of your organizations into allignment. Usually, you don't even have to bring your strategies into alignment. So long as you can find an operational overlap, you can forge a successful collaboration.

Ironically, it is often those organizations which agree the most, whose visions are already fairly closely aligned, who fall into the trap of pursuing complete agreement as a prerequisite to collaboration. But sometimes these organizations are competing with each other for resources, such as volunteers, funding, and media attention. This competition often translates into one of the following outcomes, in the context of collaboration: They hide their competition altogether and then it emerges as conflict during implementation. Or they transform their competitive issues into endless bickering and delays about vision statements and principles.

Neither of these is a desired outcome and both are the result of not taking a candid and matter-of-fact approach to the issues raised by operational coordination and partnership.

I'm not saying that organizations with opposing agendas find collaboration easy. Nor should they, if they are acting with integrity. But you would be surprised at the number of successful collaborations between various activist organizations and their corporate enemies, using narrow operational goals....

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