Working with like-minded organizations is a good way to bolster your grassroots advocacy program.
When organizations work together, they extend their reach, bring complimentary skills together and show policymakers that they represent a broader swath of constituents than just those on one organization’s list.
Cooperation comes in all different shapes and sizes. Some are small collaborations between two organizations, such as sharing content, or meeting regularly to share information. Others are larger, more official efforts in which multiple organizations form a coalition and kick in funding to conduct advocacy activities. They might build a coalition website, for example, or buy digital advertising together.
Every organization will have different needs and opportunities. But however you choose to collaborate, there are some practices that can make partnerships and coalitions work more effectively.
Here are some ideas.
Creating Effective Partnerships
- Start Small. A complicated collaboration strategy can collapse under its own weight. If you agree to do joint webinars, email alerts, rallies, a white paper and a petition, that presents a lot of moving parts—and a lot of things that can go wrong. A better strategy is to start with something small, such as sharing each other’s posts and developing a relationship you can build upon.
- Put It in Writing. You don’t necessarily need a contract for simple cooperative strategies, but a shared document can help a great deal because it makes everyone’s responsibilities clear. Of course, larger agreements that involve money may well require contracts.
- Get Internal Buy-in. One common scenario is that a CEO or other executive makes an agreement with a peer organization, and then turns it over to the advocacy team to fulfill the details. If a team wasn’t consulted about the effort, this is simply more work—often without additional resources. To avoid this, get buy-in from the people on the team that will actually be doing the work, explaining why the cooperation will help the mission. When people are invested, things run much more smoothly.
- Be Professional. Partnerships and coalitions can easily bog down if one side or the other takes weeks to finish work, gain approvals and hold up their side of the bargain. Don’t be the organization that is holding things up. If you make deadlines and operate professionally, the collaboration will work much better.
- Manage the Relationship. There may be multiple people on your staff working with your partner(s), but you should know who within your organization “owns” the relationship. This is the person who makes decisions, communicates officially and who helps solve problems when they arise.
- Understand the Boundaries. You may have solid partnerships, but there are some things that should remain proprietary to your organization. For example, you may send an email to your list that is written by your partner. But few organizations would share the list and its data itself.
In the end, coalitions and partnerships can amplify your message and result in far more forceful advocacy. But it often presents additional work. If you have a plan to communicate regularly and get that work done, your collaborations will be far more effective.