Twenty-First Century Collaboration Challenge

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Success Through Strategic Alliances

In an era characterized by financial belt-tightening, smaller donations, reduced government spending, growing unemployment, corporation downsizing, nonprofits vie for waning funds. What are the secrets of receiving successful fundraising campaigns and practical steps for effective campaigns?

The new strategic perspective makes collaboration imperative. Simply put, alliances are vehicles for achieving each participant’s mission, so partnering should be considered an integral part of a nonprofit organization’s (NPO’s) or association’s strategy. An organization must think strategically to get the most out of cross-sector collaborations. For each alliance, it must delineate systematically, the why, what, when, and how of creating, developing and managing the relationship, answering the relationship, answering the following questions.

Why should we collaborate? The organization should specify the function and value of collaboration in terms of where the collaboration fits into the organization’s overall strategy and how it contributes to the accomplishment of its mission.

What type of collaboration should we undertake? Given the multitude of collaboration modalities, the organization must understand the implications of these different modes in order to select the optimum fit for each specific circumstance.

With whom should we collaborate? To select the right partner, the organization must find the fit between missions, values, needs and competencies.

When should we collaborate? Timing is an integral ingredient of strategy formulation. The organization must take as central concerns deciding when to embark upon an alliance and when to change its nature.

How should we collaborate? The organization must view the specific design and management of alliance as part of an ongoing interactive (repeat) process that evolves with the collaboration.

It must be clear, there are no magical secrets, potions, incantations or wands to wave that guarantee goal-reaching drivers. Successful fundraising campaign efforts use carefully learned and tested procedures that really work.

The key considerations for associations, institutions, and NPO’s as they work on these questions are embedded in analyses presented in subsequent research and target for potential donors.

Effective campaigns must focus on a specific strategy such as:
Cultivating potential donors
Obtaining foundation grants (tough times)
Train solicitors and pair them with right prospect
Use feasibility studies to your best advantage
Categorize large, intermediate and small gift prospects
Conduct one-on-one and group solicitations
Create programs and packages for short and long-term direct mail drivers
Save money by producing in-house campaign publications using desktop publishing software

As NPO’s or religious organizations, we must understand the evolution of a donor to include enrollment and education. There are vehicles for collaboration which do not require the following: