Please read the articles by McKnight (handout), Obama (coursepack)
and Homan (coursepack).
Further reading on the issue: Mullett (link), Mulroy (link).
Questions for the journal:
1. Is it possible to 'develop' a community?
2. Why do we need to think about community development in
contemporary society?
3. Are there alternatives to community development?
4. What is the relationship between community development and the crisis
in the nonprofit sector?
5. How do the community development strategies used by Obama in Chicago in
the 1980's differ from those suggested by other contemporary writers?
6. How can the challenges of community cooperation identified by Mulroy and
Mullett be addressed?
7. What is the meaning of community as it relates to community development?
8. How does community development differ from creating a social movement
Action Research
Volume 2(2): 145–165
Copyright© 2004 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi
www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/1476750304043728
ARTICLE
Being, becoming and belonging
Getting to ambassadorship, a new metaphor
for living and collaborating in the community
Jennifer Mullett
Centre for Community Health Promotion Research
Karen Jung
Centre for Community Health Promotion Research
Marcia Hills
Centre for Community Health Promotion Research
ABSTRACT
KEY WORDS
•
action research
•
ambassadorship
•
collaboration
•
collective life
•
community
•
non-profits
For non-profit social agencies, new contract funding structures
have increased their vulnerability. Collaboration is a strategy for
dealing with reductions in the availability of funding and the
pressures to ‘do more with less’ but there are few illustrations
of how this might be achieved. The main body of literature
devoted to creating models for collaboration was developed in
the world of the new public administration and market models.
Many of the less formal approaches consist of checklists and
mock contracts that strive to account for variables that may
affect collaborations. While valuable for focussing attention on
key aspects, these approaches assume a static set of factors that
predict successful collaborations. In this project, an alternative to
these types of functional or instrumental methods of partnership
development was created through a particular type of action
research known as co-operative inquiry. Through the iterative
stages of reflection and action, a new conceptualization of
collaboration evolved and a subsequent model developed. The
model is based on criteria derived from the experiences of the
community members and accounts for the dialectical relationship of the individual agency and the collective non-profit
sector. Through the process of the research, a transformation in
thinking, purpose and practice occurred, resulting in a new
metaphor for living and working in the community.
145
146 • Action Research 2(2)
Introduction
In order to survive changes in government funding, members of community
agencies wanted to unite the non-profit sector and profile what it contributes to
the community. To do this meant overcoming historically negative dynamics and
discovering ways to collaborate. In the project to be described, we used the
methodology of co-operative inquiry to develop a model of collaboration.
Through the process of the research our thinking about collaboration was transformed. In this article we will describe our approach to the inquiry, the first stages
of discovery from interviews and community forums of what we called the key
elements of collaboration, our discussions of these key elements with other
community agencies, how we examined these concepts in practice, and our subsequent discussions to reconceptualize our approach to account for internal and
external processes. Our final model is one that incorporates the dialectic of the
individual and the collective and depicts collaboration as a developmental process
that has as its goal a collective response to social issues. In the beginning, we
aspired to a collaborative community; in the end, we aspired to the kind of community described by McKnight in the following quote:
We are seeking nothing less than . . . A collective life . . . A powerful life that gains
its joy from the creativity and connectedness that comes when we join in association
to create an inclusive world. (1996, p. 123)
The issue
Staff and volunteers of 51 non-profit health and social agencies in Victoria, British
Columbia, created a network to deal with the issue of contracted funding. While
the government had increased the contracts with the non-profit agencies, the
agencies’ growing dependence on public funding rendered them vulnerable to the
availability of contract dollars (McMurty, Netting & Kettner, 1990). More
importantly, the funding structures created competitive structures within the community and antagonism between agencies that had previously worked together in
harmony.
Functionally, the current competitive funding structures have created what
Kohn (1986) calls ‘MEGA’, mutually exclusive goal attainment. One agency can
only succeed in securing funding if another does not; energy is thus unwittingly
devoted to making others lose (Kohn, 1986). This undermines the function of
non-profit agencies and takes them away from their raison d’etre, to provide
support through inter-agency connections. Instead, scarce resources are devoted
to other activities to ensure the viability of the agency. While major funders
are motivated by a desire for greater rationalization of delivery systems and
efficiency, clients are more interested in the integration of the various agencies
Mullett, Jung & Hills
Being, becoming and belonging • 147
they deal with (Shafritz, 1998). More importantly, competitive structures pose a
greater threat than inefficiency; ultimately, they pose a threat to the survival of
the volunteer sector, to citizen advocacy and to participatory democracy.
The appeal of non-profit and social service organizations has been traditionally grounded in their connection and commitments to the communities they
serve (Kettner & Martin, 1996; Ryan, 1999). The need for managerial and financial sophistication and the emphasis on professional standards of practice have
changed the way in which voluntary agencies approach their role as agents of
human and social change. Together, increasing bureaucratization and professionalization divert scarce organizational resources from core service provision
(Common & Flynn, 1992; Reading, 1994), undermine the capacity for flexible
and innovative approaches to serving clients (Wistow, Knapp, Harding & Allen,
1994) and transform voluntary organizations to the point where they become
structurally similar to the institutions that fund them – thereby losing the very
advantages that made them an attractive alternative in the first place.
McMurty et al. (1990) describe strategies to gain power over the environmental constraints of the funding structures. They include developing cooperative agreements, joint ventures and increasing networking with the agencies.
While the current literature suggests collaborative models as a strategy for dealing with the environmental pressures of the funding structures, there are few
examples of what these models look like or any description of the process of how
they might be achieved, particularly in the non-profit sector (Ginsler, 1998).
Solutions to the difficulties are often dealt with on an ‘as needed’ basis so that
valuable experiences are not recorded for the future, or for other jurisdictions
struggling with the same issues. The main body of literature devoted to creating
models for collaboration is developed in the world of for-profit organizations
(Shafritz, 1998).
Within the health and social services field, studies related to collaboration
have focused on the partnership between the formal health system and social
services rather than collaboration amongst a broader range of community agencies (Secker & Hill, 2001). Within a particular practice context, partnerships are
more easily formed; however, when a different mix of professionals is involved,
partnerships are more difficult (Mohr, Curran, Coutts & Dennis, 2002). Key
elements of collaborative models as suggested by Mohr et al. (2002) are useful
examples but for the most part consist of descriptions of what is to be aspired to
rather than practical advice of how to get there.
For example, Mohr et al.’s (2002) key elements are, effective communication, respect for and willingness to learn from each other, multi-disciplinary
input, ability to resolve dynamic tensions and adequate resources. McFarlane and
Roach (1999) suggest ongoing communication, balancing the needs of both
government and non-profits, a consistent tendering process, empathy for the
needs of non-profit agencies and a clear sense that both partners are committed
148 • Action Research 2(2)
to helping people in need. Others have identified barriers to and facilitators of
collaboration or partnerships in community health (Scott & Thurston, 1997;
Curtis, 2002; van Eyk & Baum, 2002). There is consensus in the literature that
there is willingness for all service providers to collaborate for the purpose of
addressing client needs but a lack of knowledge or training on how to do so. Gray
(1985) notes that while extensive research has occurred to explain coordination
within existing networks of organizations, the difficulties of organizing a collaborative approach to a community problem has received less attention. Her
approach identifies preconditions for successive phases of achieving collaboration
presented as recommendations with concrete examples.
Many of the less formal and more local approaches consist of checklists and
mock contracts that strive to account for variables that may affect partnerships;
for example, a how-to manual, ‘Tool Kit for Partnerships’, was widely circulated
to non-profit agencies in British Columbia. While the checklists and variations of
this approach are valuable in focussing attention on the key aspects of partnerships, they assume a static set of factors that when matched between agencies
predict (or even guarantee) successful collaborations. Our initial research in this
project indicated that relationships between unlikely partners can develop over
the course of working together and had a checklist approach been used initially,
these potential partnerships would have been rejected a proiri (Mullett, Jung &
Hills, 2002). Our research project aimed to develop an alternative to these types
of functional or instrumental methods of partnership development.
The research and collaborative model to be described here was designed to
counteract the effects of competitive funding by developing a model for collaborative practice with and for community agencies in Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada. Our main research questions were:
•
•
•
What are members of community agencies past and current experiences with
collaborative or competitive relationships?
How were relationships transformed from competitive to collaborative and
vice versa?
What would a model of inter-agency collaboration look like that was
developed from the experiences of community members?
Forming the inquiry group
I (the first author) had assisted some agencies with evaluations of their programmes. They knew my interest in action research and that I chaired a review
committee for a funding organization. Gary Murphy and Lorna Hillman,
Executive Directors of social services community agencies, asked for my help in
obtaining funds for a research project. I met with a group of 20 representatives
Mullett, Jung & Hills
Being, becoming and belonging • 149
(volunteers, clients, board members and executive directors) of the volunteer
sector to discuss the idea in more detail. My colleague and fellow researcher,
Marcia Hills, joined us. Through these meetings (once a month for four months)
I facilitated discussion to develop the purpose of the research project, which
resulted in a proposal and subsequent funding to hold a community forum.
Through the writing of this proposal I became committed to the objective and the
project shifted from being ‘theirs’ to ‘ours’.
The forum was attended by representatives from approximately 30 agencies at the four levels of board members, staff, volunteers and clients. Participants
discussed the effects of competitive structures and concluded that in their experience in the community, competition breeds: secrecy; fragmentation and duplication of service; lack of trust between agencies; and an erosion of their mandate.
We invited attendees to collaborate in developing a proposal for a threeyear action research project using cooperative inquiry (Reason, 1988). Community members liked the collaborative and practical nature of the approach. In
addition, because our intent was to build a model of collaboration that was based
on community members’ experiences, the methodology provided us with a structure and a process for examining these experiences. It was subsequently funded
for three years and the second author, Karen Jung (a graduate student), was hired
as the research coordinator responsible for liaison with the community members.
Another community forum attended by 45 people was held. Attendees were
invited to join an inquiry group or to be part of an advisory group. Fourteen
participants formed the inquiry group, comprised of four executive directors of
health and social services community agencies, two front line staff, two volunteers (one of whom was also a front line worker), one representative from the
provincial government, one representative from the regional health authority,
two researchers, a research coordinator, and a research assistant from the
University of Victoria. Others agreed to be part of an advisory group that would
meet every three months to guide and validate the development of the project.
With the addition of clients, the representation in the advisory group was the
same as the inquiry group and attendance fluctuated from 20 people to 40 people
at any given meeting.
Approach to the inquiry
The project used a particular action research methodology – cooperative inquiry
– developed by John Heron (1971, 1996) and Peter Reason (1988, 1994). This
methodology engages all participants, researchers and community members as
equal partners in the research process. It is a way of doing research whereby all
those involved contribute to all aspects of the research: from deciding what is
looked at, to the methods of the research, to making sense of the data, and to
150 • Action Research 2(2)
contributing to the action – the main purpose of the research. All participants are
thus both co-researchers and co-subjects in a social action enterprise (Reason,
1988; Heron & Reason, 2001). The researchers, by virtue of being community
members and therefore at one time or another either clients of or volunteers for
community agencies, qualified as co-subjects.
The mission of community agencies is to foster a sense of empowerment in
their clients and to enhance citizen control (Hardina, 1990). Thus, cooperative
inquiry is an approach that is congruent with the purposes and values of the
agencies. In addition, cooperative inquiry provided us with a structure and a
rigour for the process we had already begun. Cooperative inquiry, with the
structure of a series of logical stages of self-critical movement through ideas, practice and experience that are continually honed and refined, provided the ideal
research approach through which to build a model of collaboration based on
community members’ experiences. It was clear from the meetings and the community forum that the community members profoundly understood the issues,
both experientially and intellectually, and that they were passionate about finding a practical solution. Because of this we thought it essential to adopt a research
process that would allow us to incorporate the four types of knowledge – propositional, presentational, experiential and practical – described by Heron (1996);
this approach allowed us to make sense of what we were learning and to examine our interpretations. In addition, as the ‘solution’ being sought was to build
relationships for collaboration in the community, the research methodology had
to contribute to that process. We began the first cycle with interviews to examine
the issues and document the experiences of community members. This was
followed by a reflection cycle in which we developed a tentative model. We then
examined the tentative model in community forums and in practice. In a final
reflection cycle a revised model was developed.
First cycle
The initial stage of the research, briefly summarized here, may be read in more
detail in Mullett et al. (2002). In the first cycle of inquiry we drew on a modified
version of the method of critical incident interviews (Flanagan, 1954) to ground
the research in criteria that were derived from the experiences of clients and
care providers. The inquiry group first experimented with the method by doing
interviews within the group and then conducted interviews more widely to
examine their own and others’ experiences of collaboration between agencies,
including the difficulties that arose and solutions that were tried. In the interviews
four different types of relationships were examined:
Mullett, Jung & Hills
1
2
3
4
Being, becoming and belonging • 151
a collaborative relationship that remained that way;
a non-collaborative relationship that remained that way;
a good working relationship that subsequently deteriorated; and
a poor working relationship that subsequently improved.
The questions were tailored to elicit the specific, concrete experiences of clients,
volunteers, front line staff, board members and executive directors of non-profit
agencies. The audio-taped interviews were transcribed and analysed and
examples of different kinds of relationship identified. The following example
from one of the interviews illustrates the type of story about a negative relationship generated by this method:
Their size is different from us. They’re huge, with lots and lots of staff, and lots and
lots of money, and lots and lots of space. We’re tiny with a pretty solid group of core
volunteers, and a few staff people . . . But we never did figure out how to maintain
our separateness, our identity. And pretty soon we started to feel subsumed . . . So
we began to feel really threatened.
In contrast, the following is an example of a good working relationship.
Even though there was a substantial size difference between the agencies and some
personality issues that got in the way, there was a small collective that formed very
informally, that sort of talked about social events, and how everything was going,
and how the work was moving forward. And that helped alleviate any kind of issues
that might have developed – nothing was left to fester or get worse . . . there was also
a clear objective and a clear understanding about who would take the lead role in the
administrative chunk . . . what needed to happen and what the timelines were.
Another negative experience was described:
We had a difficult incident with a very aggressive and troubled client and we called
an agency that has a lot of experience with handling this type of thing for advice
and support. Instead of recognizing what we had done and giving us practical and
relevant advice for the situation, we were given a very basic lecture on talking to
clients. Not only was the advice not useful, we felt insulted, not listened to, and very
alone.
In contrast, the following story is of a similar need to collaborate but with a
positive outcome:
We had a situation where a client was in a life-threatening situation and needed
support. We work[ed] with an agency who were open during the night because we
were only open during the day . . . we have completely different services and different mandates . . . [but] we worked together to coordinate care. It worked because we
knew what had to be done for the client and we did it . . . the client felt that he
received wonderful integrated care to get him through the crisis . . . informal communication between the agencies was key.
152 • Action Research 2(2)
The interviews were analysed to find general characteristics of collaboration
following the guidelines for interviews described by Kvale (1996). We identified
four overlapping categories:
1
2
3
4
the historical or background conditions of the relationship;
the philosophical or ideological approaches of the different agencies;
the practices and policies used to implement and conduct the collaboration;
and
the concrete indicators and tangible behaviours that characterize successful or
unsuccessful relationships.
A first meeting was held with the advisory group in order to validate these
categories and elaborate on their meaning through dialogue. As the members
represented diverse sectors of the community it was important to discover if these
categories made sense to them based on their experience of working in the community.
While this particular way of organizing and framing the analysis was seen
as useful in providing a list of the essential components required for successful or
productive working relationships, the inquiry group’s critical reflection on the
discussions with the advisory group also identified particular limitations.
Specifically, it was felt that a model for collaboration derived from this type of
analysis would be too abstract and ideal in character, that is, it would fail to take
the exigencies and actual ambiguous conditions of many inter-agency relationships into account. Moreover, the checklist would resemble many of the organizational models currently being examined and contested. In particular, one
member of the inquiry group, the Executive Director of the Need Crisis Line,
Linda, kept us grounded by continually asking the question: how is our list
different from any other list?
The inquiry group decided to re-engage with the analysis, and in a second
cycle of reflection focussed on the more problematic aspects of inter-agency
collaboration, in order to identify concrete opportunities for transforming difficult inter-agency relationships and for transforming practice overall. In each
type of relationship (collaborative, non-collaborative, deteriorating and improving) the sources of collaboration/non-collaboration were investigated. We reexamined the stories and lists of behaviours and indicators. Five key elements
emerged from our analysis and discussions: issues of power/powerlessness,
leadership, organizational style or culture, values and principles; and ethical conduct, that is, the degree of congruence between values and actions (Mullett et al.,
2002). The presence or absence of any one of these key elements or attributes of
individual agencies has a significant impact on the capacity of non-profit agencies
to engage in mutually beneficial working relationships. Therefore, these key
elements constituted the agency determinants dimension of the first tentative
conceptual model.
Mullett, Jung & Hills
Being, becoming and belonging • 153
Deepening the inquiry with the community
As this project was about the whole community rather than a particular group of
agencies, community forums were held to obtain the perspectives of other community members who were not directly involved in the research process and to
‘ensure the boundary of the inquiry group remained open’ (Heron, 1996, p. 156).
This aspect of the research is distinct from most other cooperative inquiry
processes but was essential to the success of this project, which intended to provide a practical (and less abstract) model of collaboration that could be implemented with any agencies in the community beyond the immediate members of
the research group. Therefore, we had to determine if these ideas made sense in a
broader context. In addition, we hoped that these forums would contribute to the
development of a cohesive non-profit sector and that the foundation of the ideas
for a model of collaboration would become embedded in the community.
First community forum (attended by approximately 35 people, the
inquiry group, members of the advisory group and other community
agencies that heard about the project from colleagues)
Through thinking about and applying these key factors of the tentative model to
our work, the inquiry group realized that a paradigm shift or transformation in
thinking was required in order to give these components meaning and to see the
relationships among them. We needed the perspectives of others working in the
community to examine these apparent elements beyond their external qualities
and understand the dynamics, and therefore changeable qualities, in the context
of experience. Through the process of a community forum with the advisory
group and others in the community we began examining each of these elements
as they were experienced in daily work and how they might be transformed. For
the element of power, for example, three questions guided the discussion: How
have you experienced power? How have you discovered that you had power?
How do you turn powerlessness into power?
Second community forum (attended by 43 people)
We met again at a second forum six weeks later to conceptually map the remaining elements. Culture was examined through the questions: How can you identify
the culture of your organization? When does the culture of your organization
become a barrier to working with others? How do you change it? Values were
examined by addressing the following: What is it about your work that you
value? What actions do you take that match these values? In order to stimulate
discussion, the inquiry group shared some of the discussions that had arisen
from the critical incidents. They included examples of differences in organization
154 • Action Research 2(2)
culture and values that present potential conflicts. Through this process of dialogue with the community, we not only contextualized the knowledge we were
developing but we began to develop ownership of this knowledge within the
broader community.
Experimenting in practice
After discussion with the advisory group and the others at the forum the
providers in the inquiry group set out to observe these concepts in their practice
with regard to collaboration and to reflect on them by way of small tape
recorders at the end of the day. Karen H., a front line worker from Island Deaf
and Hard of Hearing Society, said this about her agency and their organizational
culture:
I sometimes think that what can at times be a passionately expressed respect for deaf
language and culture, and particularly ASL, promotion of that could, at times,
create a barrier to collaboration with our colleagues in the community, who perhaps
don’t hold the passionate commitment we have for it.
Through these types of observations on the key elements there was a developing
awareness of the effect of one’s own conduct (however well intentioned) on
collaboration in the community.
Reflection phase: reconceptualizing the model
In subsequent reflection meetings two things became clear to the inquiry group.
First, we recognized that collaboration is first and foremost about relationships.
An agency develops and builds trust and credibility in the community by what it
stands for and how the people that work for the agency interact with others. We
recognized and formalized the idea that agencies are judged in the community by
their principles and ethical conduct and by what they contribute to the good of
the community. The idea that agencies should strive to be an ambassador or a
‘role model’ instead of an activist or lobbyist was particularly intriguing and
seemed to represent the type of transformation hoped for. An ambassador of
the community would embody and enact the qualities that build collaborative
relationships.
A second major transformation in thinking occurred when participants
realized the significance of looking internally at one’s own practice. A significant
realization was that so much of what we do is out of habit. Without a critical
analysis of our practices, organizational culture becomes, as Karen H. said, ‘just
the way we do things around here’. A transformation in collaboration requires a
way to examine our current practices: in order to increase collaboration within
Mullett, Jung & Hills
Being, becoming and belonging • 155
the volunteer sector, the process must start by developing the capacity for collaboration within one’s own agency.
Introducing propositional knowledge to the inquiry
In subsequent meetings, the group decided that to represent collaboration
through key elements was too static. We needed a conceptual framework that
was more organic and represented the developmental aspect of these relations,
and the dialectical relationship of the individual agency and the greater community. In addition, we wanted the conceptual framework to incorporate the
process of developing or getting to ambassadorship. We had met together for two
years and, although the group had changed, a core group remained active. We
had made progress and our commitment was as strong as in the beginning but we
were stuck on how to move forward conceptually: we realized that a more holistic heuristic was needed in order to encapsulate the entirety of living and working
with others in the community.
At this stage I (the first author) introduced the concepts of being, becoming
and belonging borrowed from a colleague, Charles Lemery, who uses these ideas
as a conceptual basis for teaching undergraduate psychology (Lemery, 2002).
Applying this conceptualization of a holistic and dynamic approach means that
an agency is ‘standing for something’ but at the same time it is becoming something else, both over time and simultaneously (Lemery, 2002). This seemed to
capture the dynamic quality we were seeking. I reacquainted myself with developmental theorists such as Vygotsky (1978) and Mead (1956) and reread Soviet
psychology literature (Petrovsky, 1985) for an understanding of the dialectic of
the individual and the collective. Karen J. read Rootman and Raeburn (1998)
who had used the concepts of being, becoming and belonging in a diagram to
represent quality of life in the community.
One way of understanding the concept of ambassadorship is to compare it
to the development of an individual as a human being. Developmental theorists
such as Vygotsky (1978) and Mead (1956) have proposed that the conscious
integrated self develops through social interaction and the striving to belong.
Development in this conceptualization is dialectical, that is, in order to become
and be an individual, you must belong with others (Lemery, 2002).
Through the many discussions with community members and representatives of non-profit organizations, we realized that the development of the self is
not only analogous to the development of an agency, it is inexorably linked.
Agencies are run by individuals, many of whom judge their self-worth both by
how they as an individual and their agency contribute to the good of the community. The development of individual agencies is in turn linked to the development
of the sector and the sector is interrelated with individual agencies.
156 • Action Research 2(2)
An agency is not something exclusive and autonomous but always remains
a part of the community. A collective, in this case the non-profit sector, has
been described by Petrovsky as a purposeful group of organized individuals (or
agencies) united by common goals of activity and subject to the goals of the
community. The relations between agencies are that of ‘responsible dependence’
(Petrovsky, 1985, p. 49). According to Petrovsky (1985) a collective does not take
shape and become cohesive in any singular activity, but only in the activity which
makes up the main purpose of the collective’s life, in this case, the desire to serve
the community. Those who work in the volunteer sector view themselves – and
individuals take their meaning and satisfaction from – as being a common group.
In Petrovsky’s conception of a collective, this may be defined as a group of
people comprising a part of society united by common goals. When individuals
are part of a group, activities have both personal significance and social value;
interrelations between people cannot be removed from the actual content of joint
activity and the social processes of which they are a part (Petrovsky, 1985).
The volunteer sector within a community is more than an association of
people or agencies. One of the most important characteristics of an agency is that
it looks to the whole sector as a source of orientation, taking pride in being part
of ‘the volunteer sector’ and the associated values. Each participant agency has an
interest in the assessment of its principles, relevance and worth, of each individual’s or agency’s contribution to the common work in the community.
Evaluation of the value of their work is inextricably connected to the perceptions
of community members.
Conceptually, the interrelatedness of the sector and the individual/individual agency is essential to understanding the development and sustainability of
collaborative relationships. If, as we have tried to argue, collaborative relationships are at the core of a strong volunteer sector, then the viability of the sector
and its effectiveness are strongest when an individual agency’s operations are
influenced, not by immediate pressures or by the external influences of funding
arrangements, but by the aims and tasks of the activities of the sector and by a
stable set of values.
In keeping with the process of cooperative inquiry, where the different
kinds of knowledge are considered, we presented this propositional knowledge to
the inquiry group for discussion. As a group we reflected on these concepts and
whether or not they captured the essential interrelatedness of the agencies; the
context and the continuous developmental change that occurs in relationships;
and the commitment that the agencies have to the health of the community.
Karen J. created several diagrams to represent these ideas and circulated them at
subsequent meetings and by email for comment and revision. In the last meeting
of these iterations we finalized and drew on a flipchart the elements that would
fit in each part of a model of being, becoming and belonging. The conceptual
model presented here is the product of our discussions and revisions. It is both
Mullett, Jung & Hills
Being, becoming and belonging • 157
relational and dynamic in character and recognizes that non-profit agencies
operate within specific material conditions and with people who work in the
agencies.
In a shrinking welfare state – with the attendant processes of privatization,
decentralization and deregulation – competition and self-interest are functional,
as are many forms of collaborative work. On the other hand, these same processes also open up opportunities for new forms of collectivism and local control
over community services. Here, cooperation and collective interests are valued
intrinsically rather than functionally. Our model of collaboration attempts to
account for both the material conditions of working with other agencies and the
psychological, contextual and developmental aspects that influence authentic
relationships. The context within which the agencies operate is depicted at the top
of the model by a forward arrow for positive trends and a backward arrow for
negative trends in social change.
Final stage of the inquiry: articulating a model to develop
the capacity for collaboration
Healthy or good collaboration can be understood as the degree to which nonprofits are able to work together to maximize opportunities and obtain the
necessary support and resources to realize their individual and collective commitments to the community. It is this capacity to collaborate that we have conceptualized as the three main components of being, belonging and becoming.
Each of these main components has three sub-components described in a later
section. How non-profits view their work in the community is represented by the
dialectical concept of the individual and the collective. How are the concepts of
being, becoming and belonging related to the individual and the collective? When
one begins to exist for others, being is transformed to becoming, and as those
‘others’ relate to another set of ‘others’ these connections lead to belonging in the
community and that leads back to a different state of being (Hegel, cited in
Behler, 1990). In this way, the individual becomes the collective and the collective
is internalized in the individual. The advantage of conceptualizing inter-agency
collaboration in this manner is that it situates non-profits in a community context, taking into account both internal and external factors. It also lends itself to
clarifying the operational basis for change.
The model is designed to help agencies assess and reflect on their current
practices and how their practices are interrelated with the practices of some other
agencies and finally to all other agencies in the community. The purpose is to
determine how they as an agency are contributing to the development of the nonprofit sector and a thriving community. It is through the internalization of these
community relations that collaboration is successful. The model thus became a
158 • Action Research 2(2)
heuristic for an agency to engage in self-reflection and to create successful relationships by examining how they contribute to the overall good. Because of the
interrelatedness of each agency and the volunteer sector, this is not an assessment
of altruism but instead a practice that leads to preservation of the sector and
the individual agency. By rejecting the competitive relationship imposed by the
structural changes in funding arrangements, the agency contributes to the survival
of the volunteer sector as a whole and thus to its own survival as a non-profit.
The inquiry group discussed the concepts of being, becoming and belonging
and reflected on what they meant in practical terms for their everyday work. A
colloquial expression for collaboration is ‘having all the players at the table’. We
translated the concepts into three essential questions for this expression: Being:
What do we bring to the table? Belonging: Why are we at the table? Becoming:
Who will be better off because we are at the table?
Being: what do we bring to the table?
An inquiry group member expressed this aspect of the model as follows:
It means knowing who you are at the table, what you are bringing, whether or not
you yourself value what you are bringing to the table and knowing that ‘selfinterest’ has a limited role at the table.
The goal of examining the ‘being’ of an agency is to develop a sound understanding of the agency’s human, financial and other resources, its values and principles
and to ensure that both resources and values are aligned with the overall mandate
and vision. Examined in this stage are:
1
2
3
the organizational structure, that is, the roles and responsibilities of staff and
volunteers as well as the formal policies and procedures of the agency;
the context of how well those structures match the values and principles,
mandate and vision of the agency; and
the rules and norms that govern everyday activities and if they fit the overall
purpose of the agency and what it strives for.
Agency members recognized that organizational culture evolves and may stray
from its original mandate and values. By critically examining the agency’s state of
being, we evolve out of the static culture of ‘it’s the way we do things around
here’. One agency member described this self-critical reflection this way:
For me, one of the things that has changed is that instead of thinking that in order
to collaborate we need to know what the other party will bring to the table, it was
going back to the place where we ask ourselves what we will be contributing to the
relationship. Critical self-reflection is an important step that often gets missed. It’s a
key building block for any relationship.
Mullett, Jung & Hills
Being, becoming and belonging • 159
Critical reflection, as an integral approach to using the model, was discussed
in the inquiry group meeting. The following insights were generated. Critical
reflection can focus on problematic areas of practice as well as taken for granted
understandings and is necessarily relational and grounded in action. In Figure 1,
the ‘Being’ part of the model has three circles each subsumed within the next:
organizational culture, values and principles, and mandate and vision to reflect
the elements of the agency that should be cohesive and congruent rather than
separate entities.
Becoming: why are we at the table?
‘Becoming’ refers to the purposeful activities the agency undertakes to achieve its
goals or how it begins to ‘be’ for the other. This part of the model is aimed at
exploring:
1
2
3
the services provided, that is, the range and types of services the agency provides and the function they (and the agency in general) serve within and for
the community;
advocacy work devoted to raising public awareness of issues, providing community education, and becoming a voice for vulnerable and disenfranchised
clients; and
becoming an ‘ambassador’ by observing who is absent at the table and bringing forward their interests and needs.
Learning to think in terms of ‘who else needs to be included’ in any process, discussion or relationship is key.
This section of the model is therefore intended to reflect on how we begin
to contribute to the existence of other agencies. By considering the various ways
that this might be possible, we might recognize these opportunities more easily in
the future. In addition, by considering this element of our agency we elucidate the
‘invisible’ parts of our work that contribute to collaboration. ‘Becoming’ thus
refers to those actual activities that lead agency members to become ambassadors
for each other. Agency members suggested that activities such as mentoring
smaller or less experienced agencies, and creating mutual support opportunities
and purposeful opportunities to dialogue, would offset insularity and isolation
while at the same time broadening the scope of the agency’s influence and building the volunteer sector. Some insights from community members follow:
It’s about recognizing our interdependence. So in an ideal world we would [all] want
to rely on other agencies to know our role, know our mandate, and what services we
provide.
Recognizing what you can give collectively to that particular client or demonstrating
a commitment to a common value, provides a good place to start. There may be
Figure 1 The collaborative mode
Shrinking welfare state,
increasing privatization,
decentralization:
competition and
self-interest are valued
The Agency
New forms of collectivism,
opportunities for local control
over community services:
cooperation and collective
interests are valued
160 • Action Research 2(2)
Mullett, Jung & Hills
Being, becoming and belonging • 161
a temptation to ‘cut to the chase’ and get down to business, but values actually
underlie the business . . . if things fail . . . it’s actually a failure to reach common
understandings on basic values.
Collaborative relationships can include tiny gestures and huge commitments.
As in the ‘being’ section, the ‘becoming’ area in Figure 1 has three areas represented by circles: services, advocacy and empowerment activities, and ‘becoming
an ambassador’. These too are to be examined for congruency and interrelatedness and are subsumed within the goal of ambassadorship.
Belonging: who will be better off because we are at the table?
Belonging refers to the way in which the agency realizes its commitments to the
community.
This element is examined by assessing to what extent the agency is able to
do the following:
1
2
3
create benefits for the community through an ability to translate funding,
contributions and grants into accessible and useful services for the community and by the agency’s contribution to the social and economic health of
the community;
raise community awareness and public education; and
act in the ‘collective interest’ by developing the ability to recognize the artificiality of the divisions between different clients and agencies and to prioritize
the interests of the community as a whole.
A community member said this after reflecting on this aspect of the model:
Work collaboratively with funders and develop allies within the system – recognize
that power is not monolithic.
In Figure 1, the agencies’ commitments to the community are represented by the
last set of three circles under ‘belonging’. In all of the elements of being, becoming and belonging, the main purpose is to realize the interconnectedness of all
aspects of an agency’s work. Belonging leads back to a new state of being and
from there the process starts over again. The arrows around the large circle
represent the constant development and transformation that is occurring.
Inherent in all three of these elements are the larger issues of remaining true to the
values of non-profits and making a contribution to the community.
162 • Action Research 2(2)
Articulating the complete model
The model situates the community (or the collective) at the heart of each agency’s
being, becoming and belonging. The community exerts both a facilitating and
constraining influence over how the agency operates. Facilitators are features of
the sector that constitute components such as social conditions and needs,
general community support and social awareness of the issue. Constraining
influences on the other hand are factors such as available resources, political
climate and political priorities, and economic restraints. At the top of the model,
depicted as an arrow going backward and an arrow going forward, the changing
social trends and social change in society are shown as the contextual frame
within which the agencies exist. These trends are included as a reminder of the
dialectical position that within every negative trend there is an opportunity for
positive change.
Applying the model
The community agencies tested this model by applying it in their own work and
recording their reflections of it. Here are some of the insights that occurred as a
result of this exercise. Lorna said:
If we were looking at the model here [we would be] trying to see that reciprocity,
that sense that agencies in the community would know each other well enough and
respect each other’s services and really support each other.
Marilyn from the government had this insight from the model:
The lesson that I have learned [from the model] is that it is necessary to do your
homework before engaging in a collaborative approach with another agency: the
concept of knowing yourself first is a critical one.
Joshua, volunteer at Need Crisis Line and founder of Transcend said this:
[It’s about] Being willing to think critically about this and to be open about our
resistance to doing things that would benefit the community but that don’t match
our personal ideologies, preferences, agency focus etc. Never putting ideology ahead
of people.
Our final task in the research was the design of a workbook (Mullett & Jung,
2002) that set out the process of the research inquiry, presented the model and
provided heuristics or triggers for an agency to examine its structure and its work
practices with regard to collaboration. This workbook continues to be circulated
throughout the province and in other parts of Canada. For example, a community development worker in Vancouver recently held a ‘partnership meeting’
with organizations that were experiencing difficulty with a partnership. The
workbook was used to ‘clear the air’ and determine the strengths and challenges
Mullett, Jung & Hills
Being, becoming and belonging • 163
that each organization brings to the collaboration. The workbook helped them to
focus on what they value about the partnership and the actions needed to move
forward.
Conclusions
Until an agency can examine itself and its goals and values, and recognize the
essentiality of collaboration, the symbolic nature of the collaborative relationship
– there is the potential for the collaboration to be an instrumental and static collaboration rather than one that promotes the good of the community and the
non-profit sector. What is the difference for survival between these two? The nonprofit agencies are not created out of instrumental relations but out of citizen
advocacy and a set of values that reflect civic engagement. It is the external
constraints of funding and other community dynamics that threaten to create
business relations (instrumental) out of people relations (symbolic). The model is
intended to be used as a heuristic, as a way to examine whether one’s motivations
have become rooted to a competitive structure or to the values connected with the
ideology of a civil society. It is intended to create conscientization (Freire, 1996)
of everyday practices to examine whether or not they contribute to the community or inadvertently reproduce the ethics of a business framework.
We believe that the main innovations of our conceptual model for collaboration are:
1
2
3
4
collaboration comes from knowing oneself (being able to critically reflect on
one’s own practice) and building capacity within one’s own agency for
collaboration;
knowing how to behave collaboratively (internalizing the concept of collaboration, transforming one’s own practice, or becoming the embodiment of a
‘collaborative community’);
appreciating the developmental quality of collaboration (rather than viewing
collaboration as a set of instrumental relationships that can be created with a
contract or some other formalized set of instructions); and
recognizing the symbolic significance of collaboration for those who engage
in it, that is, the development of self and intersubjectivity, and the ability to
see how one’s own small gestures translate into a common good for the community.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the British Columbia Health Research Foundation for their
financial support; the members of the Inquiry Group: Sandy Bjola, Jane Dewing,
164 • Action Research 2(2)
Joshua Goldberg, Lorna Hillman, Karen Hope, Jan Robertson, Larry Scyner, Marilyn
Shinto, Linda Stanton and Bonita Talstra; and, in memoriam, Gary Murphy. We also
thank the reviewers and the editors, in particular Peter Reason, for their thorough and
insightful comments and their dedication to collaborative research.
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Community as a Factor
in Implementing
Interorganizational
Partnerships
Issues, Constraints, and Adaptations
Elizabeth A. Mulroy
This article reports findings from a community-based study of
collaboration among seven nonprofit human service agencies
in a very low-income urban neighborhood. The project, funded
by a federal demonstration grant, was developed to prevent child
abuse and neglect as an alternative to the existing public
child welfare system. Findings suggest that privatization, funding uncertainties, and community-level factors posed external
stressors that constrained executives’ ability to collaborate. The
article identifies five key stressors, analyzes how each constrained the partnership, and then discusses specific adaptations
made by executive leadership in political, technical, and interpersonal areas that facilitated strategic adjustment and realignment in a very complex interorganizational arrangement and
set of relationships. Finally, implications are drawn for nonprofit
managers, social policy, and nonprofit research.
M
human service organizations and
their frontline program coordinators face increasing
pressure from philanthropic and government funders
as well as from their own internal strategic plans to collaborate
with external actors at both organizational and program levels
(Takahashi and Smutny, 2002; Lowndes and Skelcher, 1998; Mulroy,
1997). In a larger frame, Salamon (1999) argues that the third sector in the United States is at a critical juncture and the sustainability of civil society sectors should not be taken for granted. One of
Salamon’s recommendations is to use multisector, interorganizational
ANAGERS OF NONPROFIT
Note: An earlier version of this article was presented at the fourth international
conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research in July 2000.
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Nonprofit Sector Research
Fund of the Aspen Institute.
NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, vol. 14, no. 1, Fall 2003
© Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
47
48
MULROY
What issues in
the community
context pose
constraints for
a community
partnership?
collaborations as a means through which nonprofit organizations
can better respond to societal needs.
But this is easier said than done. Studies of collaborations and
partnerships point to conditions that may hinder implementation
(Provan and Milward, 1995; Mulroy, 1997; Alter and Hague, 1993;
Gray, 1989). One recent study suggested that managers must have a
wide range of skills: from those of the collaborative entrepreneur
capable of bringing the partners together to those of the collaborative manager capable of ensuring interorganizational sustainability—
skills rarely found in one person (Takahashi and Smutny, 2002).
Although multiple and diverse managerial skills may indeed be necessary to both assemble and manage a complex partnership over
time, the purpose of this article is to identify another set of potential constraints—contextual factors at the community level—that
boards of directors and managers should carefully consider before
they decide to involve their agencies and staff in an interorganizational collaboration.
Many such collaborations exist as a result of the implementation
of a specific federal or state public policy. The resulting partnerships
are intended to take place in a local jurisdiction; yet little may be
known about changing conditions, emerging issues, cultural factors,
or shifting client demographics in that locale. When redistributive
policies are at issue, community characteristics themselves may pose
intervening conditions that constrain partnership formation and sustainability (Jansson, 1994).
This article poses the following questions: What issues in the
community context pose constraints for a community partnership?
To what extent is the implementation process constrained? Do participant organizations make adaptations, and if so, with what effect?
Because policymakers continue to charge nonprofits with leadership
roles for community building through partnerships (Chaskin,
Brown, Venkatesh, and Vidal, 2001), we need to know more about
the processes of implementing social policies in communities with
very low income, the potential conflicts that may exist in the external environment, and solutions others have used to work through
and help resolve the presenting problems so that collaboration can
result added value.
The article presents findings from a study of interorganizational collaboration among seven nonprofit organizations in
Boston, Massachusetts. The organizations came together in 1990
under the auspices of a five-year federal demonstration grant with
the goal of reducing child abuse and neglect in one of the city’s
lowest-income neighborhoods. As with demonstration grants
generally, there was a planned termination date. However, the original partners continue to collaborate in an expanded interorganizational relationship that now includes more than twenty-five
partner organizations.
I M P L E M E N T I N G I N T E R O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L PA RT N E R S H I P S
Implementing Social Policy at the Local Level
Classic studies in the implementation of public policies drawn largely
from public administration and political science disciplines have identified the problems that government agencies encounter at all levels
after a policy becomes law (Bardach, 1980; Pressman and Wildavsky,
1973; Derthick, 1972; Marris and Rein, 1967). Relevance of the local
community context as a factor in social policy implementation grew
in importance in the past few decades as the impacts of privatization
became clearer (Wolch, 1990). That is, the nonprofit operates in an
environment that includes policies of disinvestment and privatization, reduced federal funding for domestic social programs, and
complexities of the local political environment (Jansson, 1994).
The effects of the New Federalism became clearer on the provision of health, mental health, and human services since 1980. A shifting role emerged for social service nonprofit organizations: they
began to follow fresh streams of income from the public sector, essentially becoming vendors to the state through contracting and purchase of services (Smith and Lipsky, 1993; Wolch, 1990; Ostrander,
1989). Wolch (1990) contended that public sector contracting with
nonprofits created a governmental shadow state that posed multiple
dilemmas for nonprofit autonomy: (1) a deepening mutual dependency could reduce voluntary organizations’ ability to be critical of
the state; (2) the state might be unwilling to fund organizations
whose goals differ from its central purpose; (3) a state requirement
for efficiency and accountability could concentrate money in larger
organizations and exacerbate maldistribution of voluntary efforts,
because poor areas are less apt to have expected community-based
expertise; and (4) a conservative political regime could require ideologically correct missions in order to get funds either directly or
indirectly.
Reports of the long-term impacts of contracting with and purchasing services from community-based organizations (CBOs) are
beginning to come in, and benefits are accruing to large nonprofit
organizations and newer organizations started by recent social movements such as those concerning AIDS and HIV (Gibelman, 1998;
Kramer, 1994). Fabricant and Fischer (2002, p. 81), however, identified seven dilemmas for community-oriented nonprofits under contracting: “it alters power relations, makes heavy accountability
demands, changes the practices of the social service workplace,
increases the costs of nonprofits, displaces goals, obscures political
processes, and diminishes social action and community building.”
Their main point is that purchase of services and contracting with
the public sector takes the community-based nonprofit away from its
core focus on community building, social action, and collaborative
practice, bringing it instead toward bureaucracy and conformity. This
happened at a time when Putnam (2000) and others argued for the
49
50
MULROY
The federal
funders wanted
the program to
redirect child
maltreatment
services to
prevention
services and
away from the
existing largescale public
bureaucracies
strengthening of community-building organizations like settlement
houses to balance the decline of civil life and social cohesiveness
(Fabricant and Fischer, 2002).
Although nonprofit organizational theorists have traditionally
focused on internal processes of single nonprofit organizations
(Herman and Renz, 1998), Rogers and Whetton (1982) argued for
multilevel models of analysis that would examine external interorganizational coordination and partnership formation. They called for
studies that would include demographics of larger communities, service networks, and interpersonal linkages. Rogers and Whetton pointed
out that very little attention had been given to the community context
of interorganizational coordination. Partnership formation in the contracting culture at the community level requires further examination.
This article attempts to help fill that gap.
The Case: The Demonstration Grant
to Prevent Child Abuse
Selected nonprofit organizations received a federal demonstration
grant to develop a model program to prevent child abuse and neglect
in Boston, Massachusetts. The federal funders wanted the program
to redirect child maltreatment services to prevention services and
away from the existing large-scale public bureaucracies that handled
child welfare, which were underperforming and failing to adequately
protect children (Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect
[ABCAN], 1991). The program, called Dorchester CARES (Coordination, Advocacy, Resources, Education Services), developed a complex neighborhood service network of complementary programs (see
Mulroy, 1997; Mulroy and Shay, 1997; Mulroy and Shay, 1998).
The original participating agencies were all nonprofits, but they
were diverse in age, scope, and size. They included the central office
of a federation of settlement houses and three of its affiliates; a large,
traditional family service agency established in the late 1890s; a
neighborhood health center that did outreach for a large Catholic
hospital; and a statewide child abuse prevention and advocacy organization. The nonprofits ranged in size from the federation’s central
office, with an annual budget of $11.3 million, to a small settlement
house, with a $300,000 budget. Five of the agencies had a local neighborhood focus, with community-resident boards of directors; two had
regional scopes, areawide boards of directors, and national affiliations.
Nonetheless, all the agencies shared values and a common purpose
in their mission statements: to enhance the well-being of children and
families (Mulroy and Shay, 1998).
The demonstration project was institutionalized into one targeted
very low-income neighborhood during the five-year funding cycle,
and an adapted model was replicated in two other targeted very lowincome neighborhoods. All sites continue to serve their respective
constituencies seven years after the demonstration phase ended.
I M P L E M E N T I N G I N T E R O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L PA RT N E R S H I P S
The Study
Findings are based on a twenty-seven-month field study that used
direct observation (Glazer and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin,
1990) to study the operational processes and structure. Fifty-six
in-depth personal interviews were conducted, and forty-eight meetings were observed during the study period. To get a balance of perspectives, researchers conducted interviews at all seven collaborating
agencies, including with executive directors, project staff, key informant frontline workers (those who dealt face-to-face with clients), and
highly involved resident consumers. They reviewed five years of agency
annual reports from the seven participating agencies, as well as all of
the demonstration project’s quarterly reports to the federal funder, the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In addition, they completed a review of project public relations materials, U.S. census documents, empirical research on child maltreatment, meeting agendas,
meeting summaries, and interorganizational communications.
Data were collected and analyzed in three phases consistent with
grounded theory techniques (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). Sampling
narrowed in the second and third phases. Meetings and interviews
were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed. Confirmability of findings were tested through triangulation and informant feedback (Miles
and Huberman, 1994).
Five key factors, called here external stressors, emerged from the
community context that constrained partnership formation and sustainability. The next section will describe each of the stressors and
explain their sources. The following section will examine how the
CARES partnership experienced the constraints in terms of process and
structure. Then the article will analyze systems adaptations to explain
how participants and their respective organizations developed the
interpersonal and organizational capacity to make timely adaptations
to the new system, in a way that facilitated and sustained collaborative
activity in the community (see Figure 1). The article will then draw
implications for nonprofit management, social policy, and research.
External Stressors
Researchers found five external factors to be problematic for partnership formation and sustainability: uncertainty of funding streams,
the contracting and purchase-of-service culture, conflicting policies
of public child welfare, characteristics of federal demonstration grant
requirements, and shifting client demographics and neighborhood
needs.
Uncertain Funding Streams
Project founders used grant funds primarily for administrative infrastructure to get the project organized and operationalized; they had
to seek out multiple new funding streams to support each of the
emerging programs. This plan succeeded in getting the project off
51
Constraints on Collaboration
• Competition for
scarce resources
• Competition for
recognition
• Outcome
uncertainties
• Attaining local
legitimacy
• Meaning of
knowledge and
expertise:
professional vs.
community
Issues
• Funding uncertainties
• Public sector
contracting and
purchase of services
• Conflicting public–child
welfare policies
• Federal
demonstration
requirements
• Shifting
neighborhood
conditions and
changing
demographics
Interpersonal
• Environment of tolerance
• Commitment to street-level
teamwork
Technical
• Autonomy for frontline
teams
• Multidirectional
communication
• External outcome
evaluation
Political
• Solution reframed
• Decision rules: how to
share turf
System Adaptations
Figure 1. The Community Context of Interorganizational Collaboration: A Child Abuse
Prevention Demonstration Project
I M P L E M E N T I N G I N T E R O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L PA RT N E R S H I P S
the ground quickly but posed a number of managerial and operational dilemmas. First, all agency executive directors were already
under pressure at their own agencies because of the turbulent funding environment citywide (Gummer, 1990) caused by the decline of
federal social spending during the 1980s. Tensions were high as
directors juggled the effects of downsizing—program cutbacks, layoffs, mergers, and acquisitions at their own agencies—while simultaneously coming to the CARES partnership in hopes of getting new
resources.
Second, as organizations obtained multiple sources of funding
for programs and began implementation, program managers experienced a nonalignment among the funding sources. Each funding
source (public and philanthropic) had its own short time line, regulations, reporting and evaluation requirements, and expected outcomes. As each of these funding streams ran dry or was cut back by
legislative action, so were the staff positions and activities that the
grants funded. This caused constant funding uncertainty that resulted
in (1) an inability to plan programs beyond one year, (2) an unevenness in delivering services that required worker continuity and timesensitive interventions, (3) a product for the local community that
deviated from what agencies had anticipated in the original grant proposal, and (4) a need for constant grant writing to sustain the implementation of frontline programs.
Public Sector Contracting and Purchase of Services
The statewide contracting and purchase-of-services culture in the child
welfare domain became a stress point between the large family service
agency partner and the smaller CBOs, increasing tension among executive partners. Prior to formation of the CARES partnership, the effects
of fiscal cutbacks helped some of the city’s large child and family agencies develop close vendor relationships with the state Department of
Social Services (DSS), the public child welfare agency, through the purchase-of-services system. Nonprofits saw DSS as a pass-though for distribution of large amounts of federal dollars earmarked for child welfare
purposes; it was the major source of funding for programs related to
children and families in the state. In an environment of scarce
resources, virtually all nonprofit social agencies in the state, irrespective of technology or purpose, sought these funds.
DSS’s privatization of much of its child protective services investigation, monitoring, and treatment functions had two effects. First,
nonprofits whose child welfare service philosophies were compatible with the state’s received large grants and contracts (one was an
eighteen-month contract worth $1.2 million), whereas small CBOs—
such as settlement houses, which did not have the same service philosophy but still served children and families through alternative,
preventive programs—received smaller service grants such as provision for child care. Second, in the tight fiscal environment, receiving
any type of contract from the state to perform a public purpose
53
Tensions were
high as directors
juggled the effects
of downsizing—
program
cutbacks, layoffs,
mergers, and
acquisitions at
their own
agencies—. . .
[with] coming
to the CARES
partnership
54
MULROY
served to increase the dependence of both types of nonprofits on the
state. However, large child and family agencies that contracted to perform the state’s child welfare functions became aligned with the principles and practices of the child protective services status quo. As one
agency director said, “We know what the state wants. They [the
CARES staff] don’t.”
Conflicting Policies of Public Child Welfare
The partnership
was politically
constrained from
its inception.
In effect, it was
based on a
clash of public
mandates
The partnership was politically constrained from its inception. In
effect, it was based on a clash of public mandates. The state mandated its public child welfare system, for example, to implement
existing federal and state policies and procedures related to child
welfare—a system long criticized as a failure (ABCAN, 1991).
Through contracting the state purchased the services of child and
family nonprofit organizations to help it meet those mandates. In
response to acknowledged failures in the system, CARES and other
national demonstration projects were federally mandated to create
new, innovative alternatives. Thus, CARES introduced a community-based prevention alternative as the state’s child welfare agencies and vendor nonprofit organizations continued to operate in
the traditional system. The CARES mandate challenged the intervention philosophy of the status quo and threatened middle managers and social workers at DSS and those in the vendor nonprofit
organizations.
Furthermore, the CARES partnership was a new prevention initiative, with a goal of strengthening both neighborhoods and families
to prevent child abuse referrals from reaching the state in the first
place. In effect, the paradigm was different, pitting the partnership’s
community-based preventive approach against the public sector’s
traditional paradigm of child welfare, which stressed intervention.
Federal Demonstration Requirements
and Community Building
The demonstration model itself posed additional challenges in
time frame, structure, organizational development, and process. The
five-year time line speeded up community-building activities that
usually move at the community’s pace so that resident acceptance
and civic participation remain priorities. The inherent top-down
structure of a federal demonstration project injected the CARES
initiative directly into the community, rather than leaving the lead
time to observe local protocol and allow residents to invite the
agencies in (Mulroy and Lauber, 2002; Ife, 1996).
Changing Client Demographics
and Neighborhood Needs
Families participating in community-based activities in the Boston
neighborhood that CARES served presented multiple unmet needs
in addition to very low incomes and high incidence of child abuse
I M P L E M E N T I N G I N T E R O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L PA RT N E R S H I P S
55
and neglect: substance abuse, homelessness, and mental illness—all
requiring a range of service responses.
From 1960 to 1990, U.S. census data confirmed that the target
geographic area experienced new waves of immigration and white
flight that helped to transform the demographics of the community
from a white to a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual population. By 1990 only 21 percent of area residents were white; 51 percent African American; and 20 percent Hispanic. Fifty-one percent
of all families were headed by a single parent. Moreover, problems of
substance abuse, crime, infant mortality, depression, and increasing
violence pervaded the area (Earls, McGuire, and Shay, 1994).
Constraints on the Collaboration
The confluence of these external stressors in the first few years of
operation constrained the new CARES partnership in several ways
(see Figure 1). It increased competition among the seven member
agencies for contracts and grants from DSS and other potential
donors, and it increased competition for recognition in the media.
It also raised concerns about whether CARES could attain measurable outcomes within the confines of a five-year time-limited
project as well as for legitimate community-based partner agencies.
Finally, it articulated a clash between human services professionals and community-based leaders and workers who argued about
employee competencies necessary to do community work.
Competition for Scarce Resources
Relationship with the State. The decade-long competition for scarce
social program funds, compounded by the competition that the
privatization of social services generated, made six of the seven
agency partners wary of the potential imbalance of power wielded by
the seventh, the large family service agency. The key issue was the
agency’s close and favorable relationship with the state. Small community-based nonprofits and the small sponsoring advocacy agency
did not have this tight link with the state. As Smith and Lipsky (1993)
and Wolch (1990) predicted, the small agencies feared domination
by the large family service agency because of its alignment with DSS
as an efficient service contractor that shared the state’s philosophy
favoring the intervention paradigm. In stark contrast the role of the
advocacy agency was to perform a watchdog, monitoring function of
DSS itself and typically considered itself successful when the relationship with the state was adversarial. The advocacy agency publicly
advocated for systemic changes in child welfare through the courts,
in the state legislature, and in the U.S. Congress as necessary.
Loss of Autonomy. None of the seven partner agencies, including
the family service agency, wanted to diminish any autonomy it had,
and early stages of the collaborative process offered undefined benefits. But external public-funding policies, procedures, and practices
offered disincentives. First, although the state awarded incentive
Competition for
scarce social
program funds . . .
made six of the
seven agency
partners wary
of the potential
imbalance
of power
56
MULROY
points to proposals from interorganizational collaborations, the dollar
amount was the same whether one agency or seven applied. Therefore, the family service agency had little incentive to participate in
collaborative grant proposals because it could instead receive the
whole DSS grant itself.
Second, grants and contracts were increasingly targeted to lowincome geographic communities rather than to programs in nonprofit organizations. CBOs believed that when neighborhood-based
agencies received funding in one round, the state passed over them
in future rounds so that it could disperse its resources equitably.
Managers of CBOs perceived that agencies without a local neighborhood focus—for example, large, region-serving family service
agencies—appeared to receive more state funds because they developed a portable model of care they could bring into any community
as an outreach service. The outreach approach could ultimately
benefit a wide range of residents in need, but the CBOs wanted to
strengthen—not weaken—their own model of family support
services, formed on the bedrock of commitment to a particular
low-income community and its families.
Third, those without close ties to the state believed that those with
close ties cut side deals with the large state funding agencies that
served to increase their power and influence with public funders. In
sum, the struggle to retain agency autonomy and power in this partnership threatened the culture of trust that was necessary to make decisions collaboratively, because collaboration required giving up some
autonomy in order to share power. This supports Wolch’s prediction
(1990) of the importance of autonomy for the community-based
agency and the reasons that privatization and contracting can threaten
that autonomy.
Competition for Public Recognition: A Threat to Trust
Agency executives expected public recognition for their efforts, and
in an instance when this did not happen, problems of trust developed. Participation in the partnership involved moderate to high
investment of time by agency executives and a commitment to use
their agency resources. In return, executives and their boards wanted
equal public recognition as a reward for these investments (Mulroy
and Shay, 1998). One article in the city’s largest newspaper gave print
coverage to some executives and omitted the names of some participating agencies. CARES’s press release had provided accurate information, but the newspaper edited the story. This created a strain in
relations, with those whose names and agencies the newspaper did
not name suspecting others of deliberate omission.
Outcome Uncertainty in a Short-Term
Demonstration Project
Once the project became operational in the target neighborhood, managers and program staff came to see that neighborhood conditions of
I M P L E M E N T I N G I N T E R O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L PA RT N E R S H I P S
increasing crime and violence and increasing numbers of families with
multiple unmet needs posed methodological problems in the measurement of outcomes. How could they measure the success of the
prevention approach in the project’s short term when positive neighborhood change and family strengthening required development of
complex new measurement instruments and longitudinal assessment?
Agencies had neither the organizational capacity, technical skills, nor
budget allocated to do this in-house; yet a thorough evaluation of what
participants believed to be a successful demonstration was considered
very important. This constraint posed the need for external evaluation
if the agencies could find the needed resources.
Agency Acceptance and Legitimacy
in the Neighborhood
Evidence suggests that the collaboration was constrained by each partner agency’s relationship to the targeted low-income neighborhood as
either an insider or outsider. Wolch (1990) defines an insider agency as
one that residents perceive to be based in the community and physically located in the neighborhood, with a consistent track record of
service and accountability to area residents. An outsider agency is one
whose primary offices are located outside the neighborhood and not
physically located in the target community even though it offers programs in the community through storefront locations. Residents conferred legitimacy on the three settlement houses as insider agencies
and perceived the family service agency and the advocacy agency as
outsiders from downtown that had to earn acceptance over time.
The top-down nature of the demonstration structure exacerbated
this constraint. The development of a community-based interorganizational collaboration for the purpose of strengthening a specific
neighborhood and its resident families evolves over time, a serious
challenge to the CARES demonstration status. This finding supports
Vosburgh and Perlmutter’s work (1984) that demonstrations pose
their own constraints because of their shortened time frames and
characteristics.
The Meaning of Knowledge and Expertise
The multiple unmet needs of neighborhood residents brought a
demand for multiple types of services. Resident needs and preferences expanded the scope of activities to include basic needs for food,
clothing, child care, substance abuse treatment, housing, education
(including English as a second language), health, and socialization.
Some of these activities were beyond the scope of a family support
approach to prevent child abuse and neglect. Some services were
directed toward community building and others toward strengthening and counseling individual families. This raised the question of
what body of knowledge was required to understand these problems
and who was qualified to deliver services in the community in the
way the community wanted to receive them.
57
Residents
conferred
legitimacy on the
three settlement
houses as insider
agencies and
perceived
the family service
agency and the
advocacy agency
as outsiders
from downtown
58
MULROY
This negotiated
adaptation of
focus confirmed
that all agencies,
despite their
differences,
belonged in
the partnership
as equals
Neighborhood residents and CBO staff saw these experts as
disrespectful of very poor consumers and local paraprofessionals who had little or no professional training. Believing that downtown experts considered them unknowledgeable and unskilled,
they felt undervalued in the community-building process. This
created a tension between those with professional and academic
knowledge—such as social workers with M.S.W. degrees—and local
residents and community workers with community-derived knowledge or the expertise of living and surviving in a very low-income
neighborhood.
The weight of these constraints could have unraveled a collaboration, but participants made frequent and strategic adaptations to
keep CARES’s work going.
Three Types of System Adaptations
Adaptations occurred as clusters of political, technical, and interpersonal decisions and behaviors strategically adjusted and realigned
a very complex structure and set of relationships (see Figure 1).
Political Adaptations
Reframe the Core Focus. Steering committee executives reframed the
core focus by agreeing that neighborhood conditions and resident
demand were of such complexity and diversity that no single agency
could solve the problems alone. This reconceptualization had two
effects. First, it reconfigured services into the public health model of
three levels of service: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary and
secondary prevention-oriented activities such as the food pantry,
clothing exchange, parent-education classes, peer-support mentoring
group, and home-health visiting provided by CBOs were appropriately
augmented by tertiary interventions for home-based substance abuse
treatment and mental health services provided by the outsider agency
as an outreach program. Next, this negotiated adaptation of focus confirmed that all agencies, despite their differences, belonged in the partnership as equals. They reiterated a commitment to the project’s
vision. All seven agencies shared similar long-term goals for improving the lives of children and families.
Decide How to Share the Turf. Even though the agencies never
fully resolved their competition for scarce funding, the partner agencies invented new administrative procedures midpoint in the fiveyear demonstration grant cycle that helped the agencies cope with
conflict and moved organizational development forward.
• Draft a memorandum of agreement. The executive partners
drafted and signed a memo as a negotiated compromise to share
rewards. The memo established a common grant-proposal form and
decision rules stating that if one agency alone applied for and received
funding that the partnership wanted to apply for jointly, that agency
would share ownership of the product with all of the partner agencies.
I M P L E M E N T I N G I N T E R O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L PA RT N E R S H I P S
In effect, benefits that accrued to any single agency in the partnership
would accrue to all.
• Tolerate cooling off. During times of interagency conflict, the
partners understood and accepted the absence of an executive director at a mandatory steering committee meeting as a cooling-off respite
as long as the executive sent an alternate delegate who was vested with
power and authority by the board of directors of the sending agency
to make executive decisions. This procedural flexibility and interpersonal tolerance permitted all executives to be represented while the
steering committee met to deliberate and solve problems.
• Agree to disagree. When executives agreed that it was acceptable to disagree in a collaboration, clearer patterns of communication emerged that allowed executives to talk out conflicts.
• Build social relationships. Relationships were strengthened and
trust improved when CARES held off-site retreats and social occasions to forge social bonds among executives on the steering committee and CARES staff.
• Succeed at one initial community activity. One initial community activity—a family cooperative where food, clothing, and child
care could be exchanged for volunteer work by residents—became
the focus for all participants, and all the agencies shared and celebrated its success at the service level. All partner agency executives
then came to believe that no single agency could do it all.
Technical Adaptations
While steering committee members were trying to find a balance in
power relations, frontline workers from each of the partner agencies,
aware of funding tensions at the administrative level, adapted by focusing on operations and the complexity of street-level program development. Nurses, a psychologist, paraprofessionals, and educators found
common bonds that transcended agency conflicts by staying focused
on community issues, helping families, and jointly building the neighborhood service network. As one worker said, “We leave politics at the
office.”
Autonomy for Frontline Teams. The service network was decentralized so that workers from each of the agencies had the autonomy
and authority to innovate. They organized themselves into five interdisciplinary and interorganizational teams of representatives from
each program in the network: the Family Cooperative, the Mentoring Program, Home Health Visitor Program, the Family Nurturing
Program, and the Substance Abuse Treatment Program. Then they
developed an overarching prevention team of representatives from
each program in the network. Frontline workers themselves designed
this organizational structure in partnership with CARES administrative staff and steering committee executives. It brought frontline
workers closer together, with these effects: the service network operated efficiently; worker authority increased; families were better
served; and horizontal linkages among neighborhood institutions
became stronger. A series of agency cross-trainings evolved as part of
59
The service
network operated
efficiently;
worker authority
increased;
families were
better served;
and horizontal
linkages among
neighborhood
institutions
became stronger
60
MULROY
a community-planning process intended to increase executive and
worker awareness of the resources available at all partner agencies.
Multidirectional Communication. Success of the interorganizational, community-based programs solidified executive commitment
to the partnership. CARES institutionalized patterns of bottom-up
communication: monthly steering committee meetings of partner
executives were held in the community and rotated monthly to each
service site; attendance was inclusive, with all CARES staff and
prevention team members invited and expected to participate.
External Outcome Evaluation. In response to the evaluation
constraint, the project manager developed relationships with
university-based researchers who agreed to design and implement a
longitudinal outcome evaluation. A baseline study was completed; new
neighborhood-level instruments were designed; and a four-wave quantitative study was planned with the goal of publishing preliminary
results (Earls, McGuire, and Shay, 1994).
Interpersonal Adaptations
Learn Tolerance and Respect Diversity. Collaboration required
tolerance for different points of view and management styles. Executives and frontline staff learned how to create an environment of
tolerance in which everyone could appreciate and use different perspectives and individual capabilities (Mulroy and Shay, 1998). This
breakthrough unfolded over time as participants increased their
exposure to cultural differences in the community, as well as to each
other’s agencies, and devoted time to working through their own
policy and management issues.
Commitment to Street-Level Teamwork. The complexity of building a community-based service network from scratch required a commitment to work cooperatively in teams at both the executive and
program levels. Street-level teamwork was facilitated by executives’
self-awareness, a nonjudgmental attitude, and the personal ability to
adapt. For example, executives held their meetings in settlement
houses and attended CARES events and celebrations, where they
mingled with residents and frontline staff.
Implications
This project provides several lessons for nonprofit managers considering involvement in similar collaborations, as well as for policymakers and nonprofit researchers.
Nonprofit Managers
The three key lessons for managers are the following: develop
and build a network of external relations; prepare to invest in a
complex and difficult process; and expect to engage in street-level
management.
I M P L E M E N T I N G I N T E R O R G A N I Z AT I O N A L PA RT N E R S H I P S
• External relations. Partners should develop a wide lens external to the agency and invest in building strong relationships with
nonprofit organizations in the geographic area, in similar domains,
and with their executive leadership. They should identify local,
regional, state, and federal links to resources in a specific geographic
community: the impacts of rapidly changing social policy in the
agency’s domain, the changing demography of community and resident needs, the effects of shifts in practice such as privatization on
area nonprofits and altered sector relations with private and public
sector competitors and allies.
• Complex, lengthy process. Agencies should commit to a longterm relationship with partner agencies and expect the process to be
difficult. Executives at CARES agencies facilitated collaboration when
they stayed the course through periods of conflict. Problems emerged
that they could not have anticipated at the outset. Executives made
decisions midcourse that helped adapt the system and move interorganizational development forward. This improved the service
network and resulted in outcomes that gave executives the benefits
and rewards they originally sought from their investment of time and
resources.
• Street-level management. For a community-based service network to be successful, executive leadership must do two things: spend
time working in the target community face-to-face with residents; and
support, empower, and learn from community workers. Communitybased endeavors are intended to strengthen local neighborhoods and
residents (Fabricant and Fisher, 2002). Frontline workers in this
decentralized partnership had the bottom-up perspective: the local
knowledge derived from immersion in the neighborhood. They
were not only serving clients but were key partners in building and
implementing collaborative alliances in chaotic urban neighborhoods.
When executives provided institutional supports and autonomy,
frontline workers created many of the adaptations that led to innovation and system change. For example, frontline workers from the
home-based substance abuse program affiliated with the large family
service agency learned important lessons in the reality of program
implementation that they were able to transfer to other participants.
Private consultants in a downtown high-rise prepared an elegantly
written grant proposal to address substance abuse, but the resulting
program could not meet its own goals and objectives when implemented in the distressed conditions of urban poverty. Workers could
not untangle the treatment of one client’s drug abuse from her substandard housing, depression, or the violence and fears associated
with her young sons’ gang affiliations. A worker reported, “This
one case took us nine months. It was like peeling away the layers of
an onion.” Workers scaled back their expectations for program
outcomes and revised their criteria for client success. They came to
appreciate that despite their professional knowledge, training,
and commitment, they could not make a person sober. A parent
61
[Frontline
workers] were
not only serving
clients but were
key partners in
building and
implementing
collaborative
alliances in
chaotic urban
neighborhoods
62
MULROY
could only make herself sober within the limitations of her own
social and physical environment.
These frontline workers believed their approach of immersing
their work in the community was a genuine systemic reform. They
had little interest in the political dynamics taking place at the administrative level. As one frontline worker said, “Administrators need to
come down here and get their hands dirty. They’d get a kick of reality.”
Social Policy
The executive
partners created
a residentapproved service
network in a
very low-income
neighborhood
that would not
otherwise have
had these
resources
The political expectations of reforming the child welfare system
in this five-year demonstration grant project were unrealistic. Despite
the many constraints it posed, the demonstration approach also
provided many benefits. First, when the federal government takes
responsibility for setting the direction of social policy and tests ou...
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